13 May 2025
We, leading Palestinian trade unions and civil society coalitions representing the absolute majority of Palestinians in Palestine and in exile, are writing with urgency ahead of the congress of IF Metall, the second largest trade union in LO Sweden, while the Indigenous Palestinian people is facing and resisting Israel’s ongoing genocide, culminating its 77 years of settler-colonialism and apartheid. We deeply appreciate the solidarity expressed by IF Metall’s delegates with the Palestinian people, particularly with our trade unions, but we are alarmed at some glaring omissions in the motions and more so at the statements put forward by IF Metall’s leadership in reaction to the motions. We urge you to follow the example of LO Norway’s Congress BDS resolution that just passed with a landslide vote, in order for IF Metall to truly meet its ethical and legal obligations towards Palestinians.
As Palestinian trade unions have written repeatedly, including in the recent May 1st statement:
“Israel is only able to continue its livestreamed genocide against Palestinians, including daily massacres, burning our children, men and women alive, or starving and thirsting them to death, due to the ongoing complicity of states, companies and institutions around the world. On this May Day, a historic day for the international labor movement that commemorates the struggles of workers for dignity and justice, as Palestinian trade and professional unions, we urgently renew our call to unions around the world to escalate all effort to end this shameful complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, colonial apartheid and genocide.”
(1) Solidarity Begins with Ending Complicity
Strengthening and standing in solidarity with Palestinian unions and civil society is predicated first and foremost on IF Metall doing everything possible to end complicity in Israel’s grave human rights violations against the entire Palestinian people. Visits and meetings with Palestinian unions in the OPT are always welcome, but they are secondary in importance to the absolute necessity of striving to end all forms of complicity, particularly now as our people faces genocide in Gaza and brutally escalating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and beyond.
We strongly urge IF Metall to adopt ending complicity as its highest priority to express meaningful solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, self-determination, and the return and reparations for our refugees.
We urge IF Metall to follow IndustriALL Global’s position and support the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
(2) “Talks with all parties in conflict”?
The statement by IF Metall’s leadership calls Israel’s genocide a “conflict,” omitting the fact the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices, UN human rights experts, many States in the Global South, Amnesty International, not to mention the entirety of Palestinian civil society and unions, today converge on accurately describing it as a genocide. Israel’s genocide has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and its induced famine is threatening 2.3 million Palestinian lives.
IF Metall’s leadership is also ignoring that the International Court of Justice in January 2024 determined that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide against Palestinians in the illegally occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. The mere risk of genocide, according the Genocide Convention, triggers the legal obligations for States, corporations, and other entities to end all forms of complicity in all genocidal acts.
We strongly urge IF Metall’s leadership to refer to Israel’s crimes in Gaza as genocide, in harmony with international law and the growing consensus among international human rights networks and civil society, and to therefore do everything possible to end all forms of relations with Israel that may normalize or aid or assist its genocidal acts.
(3) No mention of Apartheid
The July 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion declared Israel’s entire presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, as illegal and went further to rule that Israel is violating the CERD prohibition against apartheid. Yet, IF Metall has omitted from its statement any mention of the duties triggered by the apartheid part of the ICJ decision, mentioning occupation alone.
While we welcome the motions C2 and C3 presented by IF Metall delegates calling for a boycott of Israeli goods, this is insufficient for IF Metall to meet its legal and ethical obligations.
As dozens of UN human rights experts have stated, in order for all States, including Sweden, to meet their obligations triggered by the ICJ A.O., they must “Cancel or suspend economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.” Furthermore, States must “Impose a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items that could be used against the Palestinian population under occupation.”
We strongly urge IF Metall to recognize its duty to meet these obligations and to call on the Swedish government and institutions to also comply with them.
(4) Inconsistency on Boycotting Apartheid
As far as we know, LO Sweden, to which IF Metall belongs, played an honorable role in the international movement that pushed for boycotting, divesting from and imposing sanctions on apartheid South Africa. It supported boycotts, among other measures, as a means to pressure the South African regime to end its system of racial segregation and oppression. LO also supported South African trade unions NUMSA and MAWU as well as the ANC in their struggle against the apartheid regime.
Following the ICJ’s decisive determination that Israel is imposing apartheid on Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, we strongly urge IF Metall to adopt the same positions and endorse the same boycotts, divestment and sanctions measures against apartheid Israel that it had adopted against apartheid South Africa, and to transform them into action with the urgency demanded by Israel’s ongoing genocide.
(5) What Palestinians Need and Expect from IF Metall
We recall the demands of the Palestinian trade unions’ May 1st statement in full and wish to emphasize the 5 most urgent priorities for IF Metall to:
- Pressure the Swedish pension funds and institutions to divest entirely from corporations that are complicit in aiding or assisting Israel’s illegal occupation (including settlements) and apartheid, starting, as a top priority, with military corporations that arm Israel’s genocide.
- Pressure the Swedish government to uphold its legal obligations following the ICJ rulings of 2024, as stated above, starting with imposing a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, including military parts and dual-use items and ensuring end-user compliance with international law.
- Adopt ethical procurement and ethical investment policies that exclude dealing with corporations that are implicated in grave human rights violations (particularly atrocity crimes) anywhere, including in Palestine.
- Escalate economic, academic, cultural, and sports BDS campaigns to end Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.
- Cut all ties with the Histadrut and support expelling it from all international fora.
SIGNATURES:
- General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPW)
- Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Gaza
- Palestinian Union of Postal, IT & Telecommunications Workers
- Federation of Independent Trade Unions
- The Palestinian New Federation of Trade Unions
- Agricultural Engineers Association - Jerusalem Center
- Veterinarians Syndicate - Jerusalem Center
- Engineers Association - Jerusalem Center
- Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)
- Palestinian Postal Workers' Union - (PPSWU)
- Southern Electricity Company Employees Union
- Association of Employees Of The Financial Sector -Palestine
- Health Services Employees’ Association
- Union of Workers in Kindergartens and Private Schools
- Jawwal Employee Association
- General Federation of Independent Trade Unions
- Palestinian Electricians Union - Hebron
- Palestinian Electricians Union - YATA
- Union of Workers' Unions in Local Authorities - Hebron