Hansard

The past few weeks have shown us the extent of the lie that every life is equal in this world. The Scottish Greens mourn the loss of every innocent life—Palestinian and Israeli. We condemn every act of terror, whether that is Hamas’s evil attack on a music festival or Israel’s bombing of a hospital. Terrorism is to be condemned, regardless of who is responsible. Clearly, Hamas is responsible for heinous acts of terrorism; so are the Israeli Government and the extremist Israeli settlers who illegally occupy the west bank. What else should we call the bombing of a school or a hospital, the murder of journalists such as Shireen Abu Akleh, the shooting of Palestinian footballers in the feet or the burning alive of 18-month-old Ali Saeed Dawabsheh in his home?

The conflict did not start on 7 October. The state of Israel was founded by terrorist groups such as the Irgun, predecessor to Netanyahu’s Likud party. Its founding is known to Palestinians as the Nakba—the disaster—when 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed, and infamous massacres such as that at Deir Yassin took place. For Palestinians, the Nakba was not an event in 1948 but has continued for 75 years.

The idea that the current Israeli assault on Gaza is targeted purely at Hamas is a lie. This week, on live TV, Avi Dichter, former head of Shin Bet and now a Likud minister in the Government, said:

“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, claimed there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, despite the armed wing of Hamas totalling at most 50,000 men in a civilian population of 2.4 million. Amihai Eliyahu, a minister from the fascist Jewish Power party, suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza. His party leader and national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, lives in an illegal Israeli settlement on stolen Palestinian land in the west bank, has previously been convicted for membership of a terrorist organisation and, for years, hung in his living room a portrait of a terrorist who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers.

There are countless other examples, and I raise them to point out that the terrorists are not all on one side. As a proud defender of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, I do not hesitate to condemn the vile terrorism—the evil—of Hamas, so why do so many of Israel’s defenders find it impossible to condemn the state terrorism of that Government and of those that have preceded it since 1949?

Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. That is the verdict of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Israel’s own human rights group, Breaking the Silence. The hypocrisy of Western leaders on that has been staggering. The UK, the US, the European Union and others were unequivocal in condemning Russian war crimes, including the targeting of civilian infrastructure and cutting off power and water to civilians. However, in the face of Israel’s equally outrageous and equally blatant war crimes, we get silence, equivocation or worse. Keir Starmer defended the criminal act of cutting off water and power to Gaza, and Rishi Sunak told Netanyahu,

“we want you to win.”

We know what the Israeli Government thinks victory looks like—it is telling us: the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. That victory would be a monumental defeat for the system of international law that the UK was instrumental in establishing after the horrors of the second world war.

The killing must stop—not pause, but stop. What is the purpose of short pauses? To give Gazans a break to drink water that they do not have? To eat some food that do not have? Bodies are piling up in the streets, morgues are full and it is not even safe to bury the dead. There are reports of hundreds of families having been wiped out entirely, with no survivors left to carry their name. Gaza’s small Christian community, whose presence in their land goes back to the time of Christ himself, faces total destruction.

Recently, one common response that I have had from Israel’s defenders is to bring up the horrible treatment of LGBTQ people by Hamas, as if that obliges me to support the Israeli occupation instead. Often, those responses have gone beyond Hamas into offensive generalisations about the attitude of all Palestinians towards queer people—a position that erases queer Palestinians themselves.

Not only are many Gazans writing their names on their arm to make their bodies easier to identify should they be killed by Israeli air strikes, they are posting what could be their final messages online, so that they can be remembered as more than statistics. LGBTQ Gazans are using the Queering the Map project to do so. I want to share three of those messages now.

The first is:

“I’ve always imagined you and me sitting out in the sun, hand and hand, free at last. We spoke of all the places we would go if we could. Yet you are gone now. If I had known that bombs raining down on us would take you from me, I would have gladly told the world how I adored you more than anything. I’m sorry I was a coward.”

The second is:

“Idk how long I will live so I just want this to be my memory here before I die. I am not going to leave my home, come what may. My biggest regret is not kissing this one guy. He died two days back. We had told how much we like each other and I was too shy to kiss last time. He died in the bombing. I think a big part of me died too. And soon I will be dead. To younus, i will kiss you in heaven.”

The third is:

“Pls know despite what the media says there are gay Palestinians. We are here, we are queer. Free Palestine.”

There is no liberation for LGBTQ Palestinians when Israeli soldiers are literally raising the rainbow flag over the rubble that they are buried beneath. Genocide cannot be pinkwashed.

I will briefly touch on the amendments before I close. The Greens welcome Labour’s amendment. We have also called repeatedly for all sides to be held to account by the ICC. If the Liberal amendment were to be pushed, we would have to abstain on it, because, although it contains that important line about there being “no military solution” and we share the party’s contempt for Hamas, there is a contradiction in calling for a bilateral ceasefire and the total removal of one side. It gives Hamas no incentive to agree to that ceasefire.

The conditions for peace are obvious: the unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas; the release of political prisoners, including children, held by Israel; an end to the 16-year-long Israeli siege of Gaza; Israel withdrawing its illegal settlements and apartheid walls from the occupied West Bank; fresh elections across Palestine; and the right to self-determination for Palestinians and Israelis. A two-state solution may be the most likely outcome of that, but that is for them to decide. We acknowledge the calls from some Israeli peace activists, in particular, for one secular state.

No one is free until everyone is free. Palestinian lives must be equal to those of Israelis or Scots. Scotland has a proud history of standing in solidarity with our Palestinian friends. Today, we will do so again and call for an end to the killing. Today, one message will come from this Parliament: ceasefire now.