Contribution
It is a great privilege to have secured this Adjournment debate on Government support for the people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but I regret immensely the need to do so. I, like most of the world, was horrified by Hamas’s attack on Israel and Hamas’s killing and kidnapping of Israeli citizens. I supported, and continue to support, Israel’s right to self-defence in response to that attack.
I also know that today—at least when the sun sets—will be Yom Ha’atzmaut. That is Israel’s Independence Day, when many Israelis will be celebrating their country. None the less, I am here today to ask three principal questions of the Government. First, what more can they do to support the people of Palestine? Secondly, what can the British public, particularly my constituents in Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West, do as individuals and as a community to support the people of Palestine? Thirdly, if the Government believe that there is nothing more we as a Government, as a nation or as individuals can do to support the Palestinians, could the Minister please inform the House, so that we may so inform our constituents? I said I had three questions, but in actual fact I have 12 questions for my hon. Friend the Minister, and that I will be counting them as I ask them and as she replies; this is a very important subject, and there is a lot to cover.
The north-east of England may seem far away from Gaza and the west bank—it may even seem far away from London to some—but 24 hours a day the consequences of Israel’s humanitarian blockade and use of weapons of modern warfare against civilians plays out on family televisions and social media platforms in the north-east, as it should. My constituents watch as the body of a five-year-old girl is pulled from beneath the wreckage of a car she was riding in with her family—a car that the Israel Defence Forces attacked with the most powerful weapons of modern warfare. My constituents watch a 20-day-old baby in Gaza, wrapped in a blanket by that baby’s hysterical relatives, frozen to death in a sub-tropical country—the fifth child to die from hypothermia in Gaza in six days last winter. My constituents watch one by one the deaths of the 100 Palestinian children the Israel Defence Forces killed or maimed every day in the 10 days from 21 to 31 March.
I know that my constituents see this because they stop me in the street in Newcastle—in Grainger Market when I am buying my vegetables, on the West Road when I am visiting local businesses, when I play bingo in Blakelaw, when I visit cultural centres in Benwell and Scotswood, support community centres in Fenham and knock on doors in Lemington. They ask me, “What can we do to stop the suffering we see?”
I also know this because they write to me. One wrote:
“I kindly request that you please advocate for the people of Gaza in Parliament, as they too have the right to defend themselves, they too have the right to feel safe, to live in peace and enjoy freedom and liberty without occupation, colonisation or terrorism.”
Another said:
“As a Jewish constituent of yours, I am very concerned about our Government’s relative silence regarding Israel’s abandonment of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, brokered by Qatar and Egypt. It is utterly deplorable that Israel is once again slaughtering Gazan civilians.”
I quote another constituent:
“What is the Government doing to stop the killing of Palestinian people?”
Another wrote:
“We are witnessing the most horrific of nightmares unfold. Trapped. Starved. Bombed. Surrounded by Israeli forces, with many of those who try to flee being shot at. Palestinians in north Gaza are living under a suffocating siege. Children are being bombed when they play on street corners. In central Gaza, people are being burnt alive in tents that were made to protect them. The UK must act urgently to protect Palestinians from extermination in Gaza.”
Finally, a constituent said:
“Last week, a new UN report detailed Israel’s sexual and reproductive violence: like the killing of pregnant women, the rape of male detainees, the destruction of an IVF clinic with its 4,000 embryos. Waging war on Palestinians’ ability to reproduce were termed ‘genocidal acts’. Last week, Israel’s environment Minister declared the ‘only solution for the Gaza strip is to empty it of Gazans’. I could go on as it seems there are limitless examples of other such acts. How can these actions so documented, evidenced and confessed to—facilitated by western weapons and diplomatic support—continue? No one in UK politics or media circles can plausibly say, ‘I did not know what was really happening’.”