Patricia Ferguson

I welcome the contribution by the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) this evening and that of the Foreign Secretary last week. Having supported the cause of the Palestinian people since the early 1990s and having a keen interest in Jewish culture and religion, I was particularly eager to visit the countries for myself to better understand the situation. I did so in May this year with Members from across the Chamber, and I am very grateful to Yachad for organising the visit. I declare an interest in that regard. Like most Members, I have read and thought a lot about the events of 7 October—the attack on the kibbutzim and the music festival, the murder and kidnapping of so many people, and the treatment of those held hostage. Those were dreadful events, each and every one of them, but to visit a kibbutz and to hear how the attack unfolded there—armed paragliders descending on the kibbutz in the early hours of a Saturday morning, and the murder and kidnapping of its members—was frankly shocking. It also took the IDF more than 24 hours to get to those people, and even longer to safely escort them to safety, and that was heartrending. The actions of Hamas on that date and beyond were monstrous. The woman who showed us around the kibbutz lost her home and her son, a father of three, on that day, but when we asked her what she does now, she told us that she does what she has always done: she goes into schools to talk about peace. Many Israelis we spoke to expressed similar hopes; they have great hope that the elections next month will make a difference and that a public inquiry into the events of 7 October should be held, as the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) suggested. Israelis are right to be saddened, angered and outraged by those events, but their Government’s response against the people of Gaza has been disproportionate and is a stain on the conscience of the world. However, the problems did not begin in 2023. Indeed, my late father was stationed in the middle east during the second world war. He loved the region, but was depressed by what he saw then and by what unfolded in subsequent decades. I am proud that this Government have recognised the state of Palestine, and I am even more proud that we are now committed to banning the sale of goods and services from settlements. I am also proud that we have taken such a strong leadership role internationally to get to this point. The international effort is crucial if there is to be progress. However, let us be under no illusion. When we talk about settlements, we are not talking about small villages with rudimentary services and a rural lifestyle. Many are large industrial towns with successful industries and excellent public services, most are strategically placed to prevent a Palestinian state from ever being contiguous, and all of them are illegal. E1 is potentially vast, and it is just the latest addition to that policy, which is not new. In Hebron, the second largest city in the west bank, a settlement was created in the middle of the city in 1968, and as a result the city centre is a ghost town. We see on our televisions and online the extreme actions of the settlers, and I will come back to that, but we should not underestimate for a moment the sheer grind that Palestinians in the west bank experience each and every day as they try to go about their lives—checkpoints, roads that are off limits to Palestinian cars and commercial activity, or just off limits to Palestinians full stop. The village of Khirbet Zanuta in the south Hebron hills was home to some 250 Palestinians who were forced off their land by settlers after a campaign of harassment and intimidation.