PALESTINIAN campaigners launched a Vote Palestine campaign today to make justice for the country a core issue in the upcoming general election.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has crafted six questions for parliamentary candidates, which constituents can electronically send to their local prospective MPs. 

The questions outline concrete actions for candidates to commit to if elected.

They cover calls for an immediate ceasefire, restoration of funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency, an arms embargo, support for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court to uphold international humanitarian law, suspending trade agreements with Israel and protecting the right to protest, boycott and divest from companies that are complicit in violations of international law.

Hundreds of thousands are expected to take part in the campaign.

PSC director Ben Jamal said: “The last eight months in Gaza have led to a generational shift in attitudes to Israel — a state that not only occupies Palestine and practices a system of apartheid against Palestinian people, but is now committing a genocide with appalling new chapters being seen every day. 

“And this continues with the complicity of UK political leaders who have failed to advocate for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, failed to halt arms exports, and continue to provide political support to Israel.

“Candidates who normalise massacres, who greenlight genocide, or who endorse a system of apartheid, should not expect support from voters who believe that human rights and international law should be upheld.” 

More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since October, in what the ICJ has accepted as a plausible case of genocide.