Enfield Palestine Solidarity Campaign says the bank is “complicit” in the continued bombing of Gaza

Pro-Palestine campaigners staged a passionate protest at the Barclays branch in Enfield Town over the company’s links to weapons being used by the Israeli government in Gaza.

Enfield Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), like many other similar groups around the UK, decided to target Barclays as part of its “global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel”.

In a statement following the demo the group said: “Barclays Bank provides financial services to big arms companies which supply Israel and so is facilitating the provision of weapons for Israel’s attacks on Palestinians including in Gaza.

“Barclays holds over £1billion in shares, and provides over £3billion in loans and underwriting to companies whose weapons are being used by Israel. This includes General Dynamics of America, which produces the gun systems that arm the fighter jets used by Israel and Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, which produces armoured drones, munitions and artillery used by the Israeli army.

“For this reason Enfield PSC are taking peaceful action against Barclays. We are calling on all concerned people to boycott Barclays until it ends it’s complicity in Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.”

Barclays has defended its activities in relation to Israeli arms companies. In a statement on its website it says: “We trade in shares of listed companies in response to client instruction or demand and that may result in us holding shares. We are not making investments for Barclays and Barclays is not a ‘shareholder’ or ‘investor’ in that sense in relation to these companies.

“For the reasons mentioned, it is not true that we have made a decision to invest in Elbit. We may hold shares in relation to client driven transactions, which is why we appear on the share register, but we are not investors. We note also that Elbit is highlighted because campaigners claim it makes cluster bombs. We would cease any relationship with any business where we saw evidence that it manufactures cluster bombs or components.

“As a bank, our job is to provide financial services to thousands of business clients and that includes those in the defence sector […] It is the role of government to decide foreign policy and laws which restrict the delivery of weapons to any one country.”

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