Hansard

I thank members from across the Parliament for supporting my motion today and for taking time out of their busy campaign diaries to speak on this most important of issues.

During my last speech from the front bench, I promised to continue speaking up for those whose voices have been suppressed. I hope that today’s motion is a clear demonstration of my commitment to do just that. In discussions on the issue of Israel and Palestine, there has been significant focus on the dreadful terrorist attacks on 7 October and the atrocious killing of more than 35,000 Gazans thereafter. That focus is somewhat understandable, of course.

However, it is important to note that the violence and injustices in that region did not begin on 7 October last year. I do not intend to go into a detailed history of Israel and Palestine. There are far more knowledgeable people than me who have written in depth about the history of Palestine and Israel. What is indisputable, however, is that cycles of violence will continue and many more innocent people will be killed unless we address the root causes. Unfortunately, in our lifetimes, we have seen far too many innocent people, both Palestinian and Israeli, killed due to the international community’s failure to bring about peace in the middle east.

At the core of that failure is a broken promise—a promise that was made as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled by force from their homes 76 years ago. My wife’s relatives are just one of the families who had to leave their homes in the West Bank and flee to Gaza, clutching the keys to their home in their hand in the forlorn hope that, one day, they would be allowed to return.

For decades, the promise that the international community has made has been of a two-state solution. Instead of progress towards that goal, however, we have seen the systematic occupation of Palestinian land, the expansion of illegal settlements and, with it, the erasure of generations of Palestinian families. There will simply be no peace in the region until the promises that were made by the international community are kept.

Surely the most basic step towards keeping that promise has to be the formal and immediate recognition of the Palestinian state. We cannot claim to support peace but deny statehood to the Palestinian people. It is the very height of hypocrisy and duplicity for someone to say that they believe in a two-state solution but for them to only recognise one state. There are some who try to obfuscate by invoking some mythical future process that currently does not exist, saying that they will recognise Palestine only when the time is right. Let me be absolutely clear: the time to officially recognise the Palestinian state is right now. It is in no one’s gift to veto the right of the Palestinian people. It is only through the immediate recognition of Palestine that we can truly make progress towards a sovereign Palestine and Israel coexisting safely and securely alongside each other.

I was pleased to see the First Minister make that point in a recent letter to both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer. In just over a week’s time, Keir Starmer is likely to become the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. My appeal to him and to the Government that he will lead is not to equivocate, and not to deny the people of Palestine their inalienable right to statehood for a second longer. Instead, they should ensure that the UK joins with our allies and neighbours, Ireland, Norway and Spain, in immediately recognising the state of Palestine. Anything less will be a betrayal of the people of Palestine, who have been let down for far too long.

For me, this has never been a question of being either pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli; it has been a question of being pro-humanity. I am left asking the question: where is our humanity? With more than 37,000 Gazans, including 14,000 children, killed—not passing away, not dying, but killed—where is our humanity? With more than 86,000 injured, where is our humanity?

The car in which six-year-old Hind Rajab was travelling when she was killed is alleged to have been hit by 335 bullets—335 bullets raining down on a car full of innocent men, women and children. Where is our humanity?

If humanity is our driving force, surely we all agree that the UK Government must end the sale of arms to Israel, and do so immediately. International Criminal Court prosecutors are seeking arrest warrants for Hamas and senior members of the Israeli Government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The International Court of Justice is considering whether Israel has committed the gravest of crimes—genocide. Sending arms to Israel is, therefore, not only morally unjustifiable; it is complicity. We should have nothing to do with war crimes, which are undoubtedly being committed.

Accountability is the very bedrock of the global rules-based order. If arrest warrants are issued, the UK Government must make it clear that, should anyone against whom a warrant is issued—including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—land on British soil, they will be arrested, so that they can be held to account for the crimes that they have committed. We should be in no doubt that, as the United Nations has recently stated, war crimes are being committed, and it is right that those who are guilty, be they state or non-state actors, are held to account.

I conclude by asking myself: how much more suffering must people endure for the violence to cease? As I referred to already, more than 14,000 children in Gaza have been killed. According to Save the Children,

“Up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing ... many trapped beneath rubble, detained, buried in unmarked graves, or lost from their families”.

Hospitals are being obliterated, schools destroyed and UN buildings bombed—and all of that is being live streamed into our living rooms, while political leaders fail abysmally to put an end to the violence.

We must continue to raise our voice and demand a ceasefire; demand the release of all hostages; demand an end to arms sales to Israel; demand an end to the occupation; and demand the immediate recognition of the state of Palestine. Future generations will ask us how on earth we allowed such a massacre to take place. At the very least, let us be able to say that we were on the right side of history.