Israel and Palestine

Debate between Deirdre Costigan and Imran Hussain

Monday 14th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and it is the point that I am making. I will come on to the international rules-based order shortly, and that will perhaps answer his very important question.

Many of us in this House have been calling for these measures for years. Let us be honest: many of us have stood here in debate after debate, speaking about these very issues, only to be told by Ministers time and again that they are reviewing what action to take or looking at the ICJ advisory opinion. While we were having those debates in this House and deliberating, the Palestinians did not have the luxury of waiting. Frankly, it has taken a change of Government to get us to this place. Let us be clear: on genocide in Gaza, war crimes across Palestine and the ethnic cleansing of whole Palestinian communities, the previous Government should have acted. They failed to stand against injustice, failed to stand for human rights, and failed to stand for the international rules-based order.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech. I am sure that like me, he will have had many constituents lobbying him on this issue over the past few years; in my constituency, the Hanwell Friends of Sabastiya, which is a village on the west bank, have often come up to speak to me. Does he agree that community organisations and friendship groups like that have had an important role to play in influencing this Government to take the robust steps that they have now taken?

[Imran Hussain]

My hon. Friend raises a much broader point. Let us pay tribute to not just the fantastic community groups in all our constituencies, but the millions of people who rightly marched on our streets when our Government got it so wrong. I pay tribute to each and every one of them for their peaceful protest. They were right, and those making the decisions in this place were wrong.

I will concentrate my remarks not on the direction of the recent announcements, but on the pace at which this Government should now travel. As always, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) made a powerful contribution. He is absolutely right; while I, like him, welcome the Government’s announcement of a double lock on arms licences, this House still needs clarity today. I very much hope that the Minister will clarify whether that double lock applies to existing licences.

My sincere request of this Government is that we must go further. We must now end all remaining arms sales to Israel and, in particular, close the F-35 loophole. We must ensure that no equipment of UK origin directly or indirectly supports genocide in Gaza, or war crimes anywhere in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The scale of death and suffering caused by the right-wing Netanyahu Government’s genocide in Gaza demands urgent and further immediate action. With more than 70,000 Palestinians killed in recent years, including over 21,000 children, the scale of this horror should shame the entire international community. The blockade, the denial of aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the forced confinement of Palestinians while Israel illegally occupies most of their land have created the most serious humanitarian crisis. This is a product of the machinery of genocide and war crimes that Israel continues to operate. Children continue to be denied food, water and medicines, and families continue to be pushed into impossible conditions.

If we are serious about international law, we must go further. We must press for the full and immediate lifting of the blockade, unimpeded humanitarian access and the protection of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s mandate, staff, premises and operations. We should also be clear that although aid funding is, of course, welcome—the spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), was right that there is a different debate to be had about our contribution to international aid and how, disappointingly, it has dropped down the agenda—it cannot be a substitute for the political action needed to stop the war crimes and the conditions of genocide that make that aid necessary in the first place.