Hansard

I thank Bill Kidd for giving Parliament an opportunity to discuss the horrific and enduring suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are victims of an 18-year blockade.

Life in Gaza has become hopeless. People—trapped and living mostly in tents, with some sleeping on the bare roads—are now dying the most horrible deaths while the world is watching live, in real time, and is literally doing nothing to stop what is happening.

We have had 20 months of that. Israel’s war on the Palestinian people has become a well-planned operation to clear the land and to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of their people. It is like nothing that we have witnessed in our lifetime. At least 56,000 people are dead, with the actual total probably much higher, and yet the hostages are still in danger because of that strategy. This is not self-defence. I, and most members in the chamber, have condemned the atrocities of 7 October, but, 20 months on, nothing—nothing—can justify what has happened to the Palestinians in Gaza.

Rafah, with its population of 275,000, has gone; Jabalia had 56,000 residents—now all gone; and Beit Lahiya had a population of 108,000. They are now in ruins. Israel stands out as being amongst the most extreme war cases in modern history right now. Nonetheless, there have been many brave people—too many to mention—who have been witnesses to this genocide, risking their own lives to save other people.

Dr Victoria Rose served for more than months in Gaza. She talks of a three-month blockade of food—for three months, Israel deliberately blocked food from going into the Gaza strip. She talks of the children whose muscles are wasting, with a loss of fat and a lack of essential nutrients. They are not healing, and they have infections as a result of their poor immune systems. There has been no medical aid since 2 March. Hospitals have run out of 47 per cent of all drugs, and the antibiotics that they have are not the ones that they need.

Why are no journalists allowed into Gaza to report any of that? Of the ones who have been reporting, 200 are already dead, and we are losing count. Who has not cried at these scenes? Gaza is completely on fire—it is flattened, and its children are under the rubble, with no adequate equipment to rescue them. It is unforgivable, but crying does nothing to stop it.

My dear friends Ahmed Al-Nasar and Dr Khamis Elessi message me most days from Gaza. They say that the fire and the bombs are relentless every hour of every day. They cannot sleep, and they all know that, one time, it is going to be them. Nasser hospital has been forced to transport wounded people on public transport. If we want to imagine the unimaginable, we are seeing it in Gaza right now. The speed and the scale of the bombs make them the most powerful weaponry in the world, and they are being used against the poorest women and children.

This is about not just the actions of one Government, but the actions of all the European Governments and what they are not doing to stop the genocide. The Labour Government has suspended 30 arms export licences; that is an important move, but we need to go further. Indeed, I do not believe that we should be supplying any weapons or parts for F-35 planes.

We should stand up and be counted—we should be trying to stop the slaughter. The future of the region depends on it. If we believe in peace in the region, we have to stop what is happening in Gaza. We have to realise that the morality of the west depends on it. We cannot say that we are a nation of people who believe in morality if we are not prepared to do something to stop what is happening in Gaza.

As Bill Kidd was saying, there is death by starvation. On 16 June, nearly 200 people were killed at a Gaza aid centre when an Israeli tank opened fire—it was witnessed and documented. The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday that its field hospital in Gaza had received 200 patients, marking the highest number that the hospital had received. Before the aid distribution centres were set up, people were at least being fed. However, since they have been set up, people are not being fed, and children who go to get a bag of flour to feed their families are risking their lives.

The deliberate starvation of a population is a war crime, but to kill them while they are risking their lives to get food aid goes beyond even that. Words are not enough—only actions count here. There are clear breaches of international law on several counts. Israel, as the occupier, has an obligation to the people that it is responsible for, but it has not taken those responsibilities seriously.

The world can clearly see that this is a bid to destroy an entire people, and anyone who does not see that is not watching closely enough. We need to ask ourselves this: what platform are we using to stop it? Ordinary Israelis and significant Israeli figures know that the future of Israel actually depends on stopping Netanyahu from doing this. They believe in their country, and they believe that it is time to join forces with everybody else in the world who wants to stop it.

We, as politicians, must stand up and be counted, because we will be asked by our children and our grandchildren, when they see the horrors that have happened in the past 20 months, “What did you do to stop the genocide? What did you do to promote peace in the region of the middle east?” I, for one, have always said that I want peace for Israelis and security for Israel, but I want a sovereign, independent Palestinian state, too. I demand justice for the Palestinians.