Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Access

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Ward]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who does hugely important work on this topic. Journalists, aid workers and others being able to see and report on what is taking place is massively important, and there are undoubtedly horrific attempts to stop that. Bombing a hospital to kill a journalist is absolutely disgraceful.

There were 940 incidents of attacks on healthcare in Gaza in 2024, more than the total number of health attacks in Ukraine and Sudan put together for that same year. The corresponding figure for the west bank and East Jerusalem is 418 in one year.

I want to give an example of what we mean when we talk about aid workers being attacked. On 18 January 2024, an Israeli F-16 fired a 1,000-lb smart bomb that struck a Medical Aid for Palestinians and International Rescue Committee compound housing aid workers in Gaza’s supposed safe zone of al-Mawasi. It almost killed my then colleagues, including four British doctors. We had to evacuate the doctors, disrupting a lifesaving emergency medical programme, and Palestinian colleagues were traumatised and terrified.

The Israeli military knew who that compound belonged to. I know that because it was personally confirmed to me, as the then chief executive officer of Medical Aid for Palestinians, on 22 December 2023 by the British Embassy in Israel that the IDF knew of our location and had marked it as a humanitarian site. That should have protected us. The IDF knew, too, that our staff were there, having come back to rest from the hospital the previous evening, their movement having been logged properly through the supposed deconfliction system.

After bombing us, the Israeli regime provided six different explanations to the then US and UK Governments and to me for why they had bombed our compound. Those explanations, sometimes provided by and to the very highest levels of Government, ranged from the Israeli military being unaware of what had happened to denying involvement; accepting responsibility for the strike, which had been attempting to hit a target adjacent to our compound, despite the fact that the compound was not close to any other building, which was one of the reasons we selected it; accepting responsibility for the strike and asserting that it was a mistake caused by a defective tail fin on the missile that was fired; and accepting responsibility and advising that what hit the MAP-IRC compound was a piece of aircraft fuselage that had been discharged by the pilot of the Israeli fighter jet. The variety of responses was both farcical and frightening. I think it is reasonable to assume that someone cannot just get in an Israeli fighter jet, take it for a fly and fire at whatever they like. The targets, as we are often told, are very carefully selected.

I highlight, too, the targeted drone attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy—also in a supposedly deconflicted zone—that killed seven aid workers on 1 April last year, the week before I was last in Gaza. That concluded with a hurried internal Israeli investigation where no one was held accountable for murdering humanitarians. On 3 August, just last month, the Israeli military attacked the headquarters of the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Gaza, killing one of its staff in a building that also was known to the Israelis and clearly marked. Their military told the BBC that they were “reviewing the claim” of the PRCS.

Evidence shows that United Nations Relief and Works Agency staff have been killed, faced abuse and been detained on a regular basis, and subjected to sleep deprivation, beatings and attacks by dogs. Time and again, the Israeli military attack aid workers then refuse to properly investigate what happened. The only conclusion we can reach is that they are doing this deliberately—these are war crimes.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case about the catalogue of atrocities being committed. In July, the Prime Minister announced that

“the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza”.

Those steps have not been taken, and the situation has got worse; we saw what happened yesterday in Qatar. Does she agree that the UK must now recognise a Palestinian state as part of a broader push for peace and urgent humanitarian relief?

[Melanie Ward]

I absolutely agree that it is time to take the historic step of recognising a state of Palestine.

I have some questions for the Minister, but first I want to put one more thing on the record; it points to one of the reasons why the Israeli Government do not want people to see what is taking place. An aid worker who I know very well—a very experienced aid worker in Gaza—told me about a situation that he witnessed in the north of Gaza, in Gaza City, after an Israeli siege of the main hospital there. After the siege, he was one of the first people to enter the compound of the hospital. He told me that what they saw were the remains of many half-buried bodies. In all but one case, it was impossible even to identify the sex of the dead body. The only person they could identify was an old man who had his wrists bound.

This aid worker told me, too, that there was a huge pile of clothes in the compound of the hospital and that when the aid workers entered the compound, many of the people who lived around about the hospital came in and began sifting through the pile of clothes. Because they could not identify the bodies of any of the dead people, the relatives were looking through the pile of clothes to see whether they could identify any of the clothes that had belonged to their loved ones, which would mean their loved ones might be among the dead. This is why we need proper justice, investigations and accountability for what is happening in Gaza.

Does the Minister agree that it is time for an independent investigation into these incidents and others like them? Will the Government support full accountability for these and other war crimes against aid workers, and will he personally take up the case of the MAP-IRC compound bombing with the Israeli Government? Can he share what the Government have done to stop the new restrictions on aid agencies? Will the Government make it clear to Israel that if it proceeds and aid agencies are denied access, it will pay a price for doing this?

Finally, I know that the Minister will not commit to this today, but will he agree to go away and examine expanding the UK sanctions regime to cover all those involved in violations of IHL? The Government have rightly sanctioned violent settlers in the west bank, but they should also target those instructing the blockade of aid and involved in the targeting of aid workers in Gaza, for example. Will the Minister agree to look into that and write to me about it?

What happens in Gaza does not stay in Gaza. In June, a British aid worker was killed in a drone strike in Ukraine. In Sudan, refugee camps are being continuously targeted, with children and aid workers being killed. Only 10 days ago, the Houthis in Yemen arrested 19 UN staff, adding to dozens of UN staff already arbitrarily detained since 2024. Last year was the worst year on record for attacks on healthcare, and this trend is worsening. Such attacks violate international law, and the more they are allowed to continue with impunity, the more they incentivise malign actors in other conflicts to do the same. Accountability is essential.