Britain Palestine Communication Centre (BPCC) is a non-governmental institution acting as the voice of the Palestinians in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We work with the different political parties in the UK to advance the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian aspirations for independence and statehood. We organise parliamentary workshops to keep British MPs informed ab
out the plight of the Palestinian people, provide London’s decision makers with position papers on prominent issues in Palestinian affairs, publish analysis of the on-going seismic changes in the Middle East relevant to Palestine, and dedicate a great part of our time and efforts to keeping the general public informed of the impact of British foreign policy on our just cause. Since the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 the Palestinians have not been permitted to exercise their right to self-determination, nor have they been allowed to fully take charge of their political and economic affairs. While the 1947 UN Partition Plan gave the legal legitimacy to the creation of a Jewish state in parts of historic Palestine, nearly 70 years later we the Palestinians still find ourselves without a state of our own. In fact, despite our representatives’ formal acceptance of the 1967 borders of Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank as the official borders of a state of our own, over 22% of historic Palestine, we still find ourselves confined in more than five separate cantons that lack the cohesion or the geographic connectivity of a state. What’s worse is that Israel has confiscated over 50% of those 22% of historic Palestine for the construction of illegal settlements, and it has transferred well over 500,000 of its citizens into those settlements in defiance of the Geneva Conventions and the general provisions of international and humanitarian international law. Meanwhile the Gaza Strip has gone through three major wars in the last 8 years and the suffocating siege that Israel is placing on that densely populated strip of land is continuing to prevent the re-construction efforts and is causing a serious humanitarian crisis that is rendering the place un-inhabitable by 2020, according to one UN report. Since the collapse of the Middle East Peace Process in late 2000 and the outbreak of periodic violence in Palestine, nearly 10,000 Palestinians have lost their lives while the living conditions of the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have become bleak. Gaza Strip for instance, with its 1.8 million people, has the highest rate of unemployment in the world, 43% according to the World Bank. At the BPCC, we endeavour to do our part by working with British decision makers and educating the British public about Israel’s oppressive policies towards the Palestinians. We aim at reversing the current status-quo and advancing the rights of the Palestinians to live a dignified and secured life within the borders of the territories that endless resolutions by the different chambers of the United Nations and other international organizations have repeatedly called upon Israel to leave – the 1967 borders of Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
