Friends of Standing Together supporters in the Green Party protest conference ban
UK Friends of Standing Together has been barred from holding a stall at this year's Green Party conference, due to the Conference Committee's interpretation of historic party policy supporting BDS. UKFoST supporters in the party have launched an appeal.
Dear Conferences Committee, Conferences Coordinators, GPEx and GPC: We write as Green Party members committed to peaceful coexistence in Israel-Palestine.
For the second year in a row, UK Friends of Standing Together (UK FoST) has been refused permission to set up a stall at the Green Party’s autumn conference. UK FoST supports the aims and activities of Standing Together, the biggest binational (Palestinian-Israeli Jewish), anti-war, anti-racism, anti-apartheid and anti-occupation movement in Israel-Palestine.
The reason given for this year’s ban was that “nothing had changed” since Conferences Committee turned down our previous application in September 2025, on the grounds that Standing Together contravened the party’s BDS policy. We challenged that ruling in 2025 and we are appealing it again in 2026.
Much has in fact changed in the past 12 months in Israel-Palestine. The situation has worsened for Palestinians within Israel and the Occupied Territories and Standing Together activists have played the leading part in building resistance.
In the occupied West Bank, settler violence against Palestinian communities has intensified dramatically. The army and security forces look on, giving almost total impunity to extremist settlers as they drive out the villagers and cement the de facto annexation. They steal Palestinians' flocks and grazing lands, destroy their olive trees and wheat fields, raid, burn and demolish their houses, terrorise the families and inflict shocking - often fatal - injuries.
Large numbers of Standing Together activists maintain a ‘protective presence’ in the West Bank, putting their bodies between the attackers and the local people and documenting the violence. When settlers laid siege to Palestinian homes in Qusra, it was activists from Standing Together who mobilised to break the siege and get essential aid supplies to the families, confronting the soldiers protecting the settlers in order to do so. This autumn, Standing Together and Friends of Standing Together are participating in the ‘Protect the Harvest’ coalition, mobilising activists to help Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank resist settler violence.
The genocide in Gaza continues despite the ceasefire, although at a lower intensity. The conditions for Palestinians are increasingly desperate, with hundreds of thousands of people crammed into flimsy tents, exposed to missile strikes, intense heat, floods and bitter cold in winter. There is no running water, no electricity, no education system, no functioning economy and few healthcare facilities. With the IDF controlling more than half the Gaza Strip, the population is concentrated in an ever-shrinking area and soldiers shoot anyone who approaches their ill-defined boundary.
Members of Standing Together provided vital aid for Gaza and protected the trucks and drivers from attacks by settlers. Their 'Refuse War' campaign encouraged Israeli Jews to refuse to serve and supported refusers jailed for doing so.
Israel’s ‘forever wars’ have continued, with new fronts opening as soon as earlier campaigns look like winding down. The IDF now occupies most of southern Lebanon and has a significant foothold in Syria too. Palestinian communities lack bomb shelters, so whenever the war against Iran is rekindled, residents of Arab-Palestinian communities within Israel, rural farmers, and Bedouin communities are dangerously exposed to incoming missiles.
Standing Together provides bomb shelters to Bedouin-Palestinian communities neglected by the government.
As the first elections in four years approach in October, the Netanyahu government is pressing ahead with repressive measures despite losing public support. It has tightened restrictions on the media, demonised the judiciary, ignored rulings of the Supreme Court and insisted there will be no Palestinian state. The death penalty has been introduced (but only for Palestinians) and conditions at detention centres remain dire.
Standing Together is at the forefront of protests against the far-right government, for example recently holding a sit-in at the headquarters of the Religious Zionism party.
The Israeli police have done little to combat an intensifying organised crime wave in Palestinian towns and cities, where over 250 people were murdered last year and nearly 150 died at the hands of the gangs in the first half of 2026. The crime wave is in large part a product of years of underfunding and lack of social provision, fuelled by the Israeli government’s anti-Palestinian racism.
Standing Together helped organise a ‘national day of disruption’ when bereaved families, health workers, academics and other supporters across the country stopped work and blocked roads in protest at the deadly gun violence.
Palestinian citizens of Israel make up 20 per cent of the population, but their participation in elections is disproportionately small. Standing Together activists are running a ‘Get out the Vote’ campaign to increase the number of Arab-Palestinian voters in the October election. The movement's co-leaders, Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, head a new binational, left-wing political party, A Place for Us All, although it's organisationally separate from Standing Together.
Standing Together activists and organisers, split evenly between Palestinians and Jews, women and men, are prominent among the candidates for the new party. They stand for peace, an end to the occupation, safety for Arab-Palestinian communities and full equality for Palestinians and Israeli Jews. They aim to combat the housing shortage in Israel, the high cost of living and low wages.
In the UK, the vital role played by the thousands of Standing Together activists on the ground in Israel-Palestine has been recognised by Green Party MPs, with Siân Berry speaking at a UK FoST meeting in her constituency, and Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay joining the Parliamentary Friends of Standing Together. Siân Berry and Ellie Chowns also met Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish leaders from Standing Together during visits to the UK and Natalie Bennett, a Green Party peer, has spoken at a Standing Together event.
It's important to listen to Palestinian voices, especially those with direct experience, so we've attached a statement from Palestinian leaders of Standing Together debunking claims made by the Palestinian Academic Committee for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). When the Green Party passed its pro-BDS policy, it did not include adherence to every policy subsequently announced by PACBI.
Banning Standing Together and Friends of Standing Together from Conference does nothing to advance the struggle for Palestinian rights. In fact, it helps silence Palestinian voices: those that advocate building co-resistance to fight for equality. By no-platforming and boycotting Standing Together, the Green Party will be inadvertently aligning with right-wing forces in Israel, which also want to marginalise what has become one of the most visible centres of internal resistance.
As a democratic party that holds peace, social justice and the environment at its core, and believes in building bonds of solidarity based on joint struggles for shared interests, it doesn't make sense to exclude from Conference a democratic organisation that embodies all those core principles. We urge you to rescind the ban.
[Appeal, with signatories of Green Party members, sent to the Conferences Committee]