Hansard

I thank Humza Yousaf for bringing this important motion to Parliament.

We have a direct historic responsibility for the injustice perpetrated on Palestine and on the Palestinians. Therefore, we have a direct and distinctive responsibility for securing justice for Palestine and the Palestinians, for without justice there will be no lasting peace. Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, born only 25 miles from here in East Lothian, declared in 1917 that

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

That single sentence signalled that imperial Britain was prepared to give away a land that did not belong to it, though with the condition—and let me repeat it—

“that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”.

Frantz Fanon, the political radical, wrote in “The Wretched of the Earth”:

“When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe”.

I say the people of Palestine are in revolt because they can no longer breathe. In 1947, they lost more than half of their land in the UN partition plan, and three quarters of a million Palestinians were displaced at the start of the Nakba. This was not a one-off event; it grinds on and on to this day as many of those who have been dispossessed and displaced by force and their descendants are now forcibly dispossessed and forcibly displaced again inside Gaza.

Since 2008 there have been five—five—major conflicts and wars in Gaza. Settler colonisation in the West Bank has grown at the fastest rate ever; there are now half a million settlers living there. This cannot carry on.

Now the Palestinians are facing dispossession again, are being forced into exile again, are being forced to become refugees again. Yet, like so many already living in the refugee camps of Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and those scattered across the world, many will hold keys—literally hold the physical keys of their homes—and all of them will hold the dream of one day returning.

So, of course, we condemn the attacks of October the 7th, but history did not begin on October the 7th 2023. So we need our Government to use its influence as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, because of that historic, that distinctive, that direct responsibility to ensure that aid is escalated and arming is not just de-escalated but stopped altogether—not one more drone, not one more gun, not one more bullet, not one more licence.

But we need to go further. The plight of the Palestinians is not simply a humanitarian emergency. The question of Palestine can only be answered politically. So let us understand in full this injustice. Let us accept in full the part which our country played in that. Let us face up in full to the future that this is not just a question of power in a post-colonial age; this is not just a question of human and civil rights—this is a question of our moral code, our moral responsibility, our moral duty. So let us join with those on the right side of history today: let us recognise Palestine now.