Luke Akehurst

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) on securing this important debate. As a supporter of a two-state solution to achieve an independent state of Palestine and a secure Israel, I welcome the opportunity to further our commitment to forming an international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace to build civil society and to encourage reconciliation. I am proud that before being elected, I worked for 13 years as the director of an organisation called We Believe in Israel. However, it was not just a pro-Israel organisation; it was committed to a two-state solution and national self-determination for both peoples, Jews and Palestinians. That role means that I have travelled many times to both Israel and the west bank. I have seen many examples of magnificent work to promote peace and co-existence, and I have met many inspiring Israeli and Palestinian voices for peace. An example of those is the organisation Roots, which is a grassroots movement for “understanding, non-violence and transformation among Israelis and Palestinians”. It also means that the appalling terrorist attacks on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent dreadful war do not just relate to places that I have only seen on the news; they have affected communities and families that I have visited and met. One of the things I find most painful is that the communities that bore the brunt of the attacks on 7 October were communities that were deeply committed to co-existence and to helping their neighbours in Gaza. I could say many more things about the situation, both as it was on 6 October and as it has transpired after 7 October, but because of the limited time that we have and the need to enable more people to participate in the debate, I will cut short what I was going to say. We need to launch a diplomatic process towards ending the conflict, but it cannot just be a top-level diplomatic process between leaders; it must involve a grassroots diplomatic and co-existence process that marginalises the enemies of peace with a new strategy. We need to find organisations like Roots that bring together Israelis and Palestinians and build genuine understanding between them, that educate communities away from the ideologies and ideas of violence and bring them towards the ideas of peace and co-existence. We need to provide all the support that we can to those organisations that are struggling to build a sustainable, peaceful middle east.