Israel and Palestine

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. May I say “Chag Hanukkah sameach” to you, as Jews celebrate Hanukkah at this time? But we are celebrating Hanukkah, which is of course the Festival of Lights, at a very dark time for Jews not only in this country but around the world. It would be remiss of me not to mention the protest that took place at the weekend, which again involved—from a minority, admittedly—gratuitous signs of antisemitism, which led to the Holocaust Educational Trust chief executive, Karen Pollock, again saying that the centre of London had become a no-go zone for Jewish people. No part of this country, of our democracy, should ever be a no-go zone for any community.

I think, as I look around in this debate on the three petitions, that I am the only person here who has visited the site of the pogroms that took place on—[Interruption.] Perhaps some others have been since. I will give way to the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) if he wishes to intervene.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman—my hon. Friend in this instance. Just to correct the record, I was at a kibbutz, Kfar Aza, in February, seeing how tranquil and peaceful it was despite the proximity to Gaza, so I have seen that, and I am going out next month as well.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I meant since the events of 7 October. I am not sure whether anybody else has had the opportunity to spend time in the communities that were attacked in the most horrific way on 7 October and to spend time with the survivors and with the families of the hostages from those communities, so I will avail the House of my experience there this afternoon.

Let me come to the three petitions. Of course, in relation to the second petition, we all want to see humanitarian aid being facilitated and delivered into Gaza, so I have no issue with that petition—absolutely not. We all wish to see that. It would be helpful, of course, if Hamas did not steal a lot of the aid and misdirect it towards their terror network, but of course every effort should be put into that aid. However, in terms of the third petition, calling for a ceasefire, I find it incredible that we have people arguing that a ceasefire is achievable with Hamas, who, since 7 October, have made it absolutely clear that it is their intention to commit such atrocities again and again. There can be no ceasefire with Hamas—none whatever. Their intention, in their own charter, is to seek the annihilation of not just every Jew in Israel but every Jew on this planet. Let us not pretend for a moment that there is any credible option of a ceasefire with Hamas. That is a position, I am pleased to say, that both the Opposition Front Bench and my own Government’s Front Bench support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I rise to speak on the petitions before us today in no particular order, but I do not think that anyone inside or outside this Chamber would disagree with e-petition 648383, which calls on the Government to urge the Israeli Government to allow fuel, electricity and food into Gaza. The fact that aid has started is welcome, but it is nowhere near enough; we all appreciate that fact. However, I do not rise in support of e-petition 648292, which calls on the Government to seek a ceasefire. I find myself in a very unusual position, in that I will quote someone who I never thought I would quote, and that is Bernie Sanders. Over the weekend, he said:

“In terms of a permanent ceasefire, I don’t know how you can have a permanent ceasefire with Hamas, who has said before October 7 and after October 7 that they want to destroy Israel. They want a permanent war. I don’t know how you have a permanent ceasefire with an attitude like that…I think Israel has the right to defend itself”

if it goes after Hamas, but not after the Palestinian people. Those are very powerful words, with which, again, I think everyone would agree.

We have had a ceasefire previously. In fact, we had a humanitarian pause just recently, which ended on 1 December. That broke down because Hamas broke the terms of that truce. They started trying to dictate which hostages would be released, and then they began again to fire rockets indiscriminately towards residential areas of Israel—itself a war crime. If a temporary truce cannot hold, what chance is there of a permanent ceasefire?

We have an important duty in this place. I have a lot of sympathy with those calling for a ceasefire—who could see bodies being dragged out of rubble and not want that to stop? Everyone with any shred of dignity would want that. However, is that realistic? I do not think so. The pogrom of 7 October—I call it a pogrom because that is what it was—and the sheer scale of the attack that day shook the world. It shook my constituents, who have family members and friends who were not only taken hostage but killed that day—family members such as Vivian Silver, whose cousins I sat and spoke to when I was in shul at the Shrubberies, and again in Whitefield. Her cousins thought she had been taken hostage. The attack was so brutal that her body was not identified until 14 November, more than a month and a half after she was murdered. It took that long to be able to identify her remains and show she had been murdered by Hamas.

I stand with my constituents in saying that calling for a ceasefire is not the right call to make. I have gone to many shuls, spoken at many vigils and spoken to many of my constituents, and they agree. Like you, Mr McCabe, I was at Kibbutz Kfar Aza earlier this year; the tranquillity of that location is now permanently broken. As you will know, our tour guide lost pretty much her entire family that day. Her parents were murdered, and her little brother survived only by hiding under the dead bodies of his parents for seven hours. That is the barbarity—the animal nature—that we are facing.

Hamas do not care about peace. As has been said already, they say in their charter they want to wipe Jewish people off the face of the earth. But it is not just Hamas; Hezbollah in the north and Iran in the middle east are destabilising the entire region. We need to speak more about what we are doing with Iran. I make a plea again to the Minister: as has been said throughout this year and beforehand, now is the time to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in its entirety, because it is Iran that is getting these weapons to Hamas in Gaza.

There are many questions as to what is going on in Gaza. There is a terror tunnel network—that cannot be denied. We have seen the footage; we have seen the blast doors; we have seen the fire holes. It is not set up for normal transport around Gaza, but to support terror activities. That is why Israel has the right to defend itself by going after Hamas: to make sure no attacks like that can take place ever again. On 1 November, Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas, told Lebanese television that Hamas would repeat the attacks of 7 October

“a second time and a third time”,

and keep on repeating those attacks until there is no Israel. That is why I cannot support a ceasefire.