Protesters tell Labour in Liverpool: stop arming Israel, widen sanctions

Pro-Palestine demonstrators have marched on Labour's annual conference in Liverpool, pressing the UK government to halt arms sales to Israel and to impose wider sanctions. The demonstration, whose central demand was summarised as "stop arming Israel", was captured in a video report from Al Jazeera's NewsFeed published on 26 September 2026.

Banners and placards carried by the marchers called for an end to British weapons exports and for measures beyond those already announced. According to the report, the protest was directed at the ruling Labour Party's own gathering, a choice of target that makes the event part protest, part internal party dissent: demonstrators were not only attacking the government but pressing the party they had helped to elect.

The immediate trigger for the demonstration was Labour's action against Israeli settlements. The government has sanctioned individuals and organisations involved in settler activity, and campaigners involved in the march welcomed that step. But the report makes clear that the crowd did not regard it as sufficient. Their complaint was that targeted designations against far-right settlement figures leave untouched the wider machinery of British support for the Israeli military, above all the licensing regime that governs defence exports.

That licensing regime is the focus of long-running criticism. British policy on arms sales to Israel has swung in recent years: exports were suspended in 2024, with ministers arguing that continued supply would obstruct efforts to bring about a Gaza ceasefire, before a process of restoring some approvals began again. Critics say the case for allowing components and licences through has never been settled, and that the government's stated legal tests have been repeatedly challenged by lawyers and human rights organisations.

The protest therefore belongs to a broader campaign that has seen the arms trade, rather than diplomatic language, treated as the decisive issue. Advocates of an embargo or a full suspension argue that supplying weapons to a party engaged in a prolonged military campaign in Gaza carries moral and legal implications, and that incremental designations of individuals do not alter the underlying supply chain. They also point out that a state's commercial relationships, and the licences it issues, outlive any single parliamentary statement.

The Liverpool conference has become a recurring point of confrontation for campaigners. Previous Labour gatherings, including the party's conference in Brighton in 2024, saw sustained protest over Gaza, with delegates attempting to force motions onto the agenda and demonstrations running alongside the speeches. Liverpool's choice of venue adds its own weight: a historic port city with a long maritime tradition, and one of the settings where British political arguments over war, trade and the arms industry are most visibly staged.

Al Jazeera's own recent editorial line explains part of the backdrop. Alongside the video page sit reports on abuse in Israeli prisons, an Israeli death-penalty law criticised as apartheid by some commentators, and earlier coverage of flotilla campaigns launched to end the siege of Gaza. Together, these headlines frame the conditions demonstrators say make a continued British arms relationship indefensible, and give context to the slogans heard in Liverpool.

The gathering also shows how the issue has moved from the margins of Labour politics towards its centre. The party has been publicly divided between those who want a much tougher line on Israel and those who fear the diplomatic and economic cost of moving alone. A conference motion on arms sales, an embargo, or recognition of a Palestinian state would force that division into the open in front of delegates and broadcast coverage, making this year's event a test of how much internal pressure the leadership can absorb.

The report did not record an immediate response from Labour's national executive, from individual cabinet ministers, or from the government. Nor did it detail the size of the crowd or the identity of the organising groups. What it established is the location, the date, the nature of the demands and the reason demonstrators gave for dismissing the government's existing action as half-measures.

For the UK government, the stakes are practical as well as moral. A shift toward an embargo would place London at odds with Washington, which has been reluctant to impose conditions on its own defence cooperation, and would carry consequences for defence exports, joint training and wider bilateral ties. That helps explain why targeted designations — a relatively low-cost gesture — have been preferred to measures that would threaten those relationships.

Outside, the wider picture is one of a news day dominated by conflict and dissent. The same NewsFeed round-up carried reports on Ethiopian Fano fighters claiming to have captured army vehicles and weapons, women taking up arms in eastern DR Congo amid sexual violence, students protesting German military conscription, a Gaza girl disabled by an Israeli strike campaigning for wheelchairs to be allowed into the territory, a defence alliance meeting in Mecca during Houthi attacks, and the spread of Ebola in DR Congo.

What happens next will be determined inside the hall as much as on the streets outside it. Delegates and conference motions will signal whether Labour's leadership is prepared to move further than sanctions on settlements, while campaigners have made clear that they will return until the arms question itself is addressed. The message delivered in Liverpool was simple and repeatable: targeted measures against individuals are not a substitute for a change in British policy.