Syria

Debate between Hamish Falconer and Brendan O'Hara

Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

We have had initial conversations with the interim Administration about some more practical questions around social services. I am happy to write to my hon. Friend with further details.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber) (SNP)]

The Foreign Secretary is on record as saying that an inclusive political process that protects Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities was his top priority, but these attacks on civilian and minority groups have never ceased, and they were increasingly frequent before this recent atrocity. How is that strategy of protecting religious and ethnic minorities being implemented on the ground? What protective measures have been put in place in the past three months to defend those minority groups from further violent attacks? How is that being assessed and monitored so that prevention can be put in place before they happen again?

[Mr Falconer]

It is important to highlight that the violence over the weekend is not what we have seen since the fall of Assad. This is a particularly acute spike in violence. The hon. Member is right that we must do everything that we can to prevent the kind of violence that we saw over the weekend, and to understand its causes, the perpetrators and whether it has fully ceased. When I am in a position to make that assessment, I will be happy to return to the House.

Northern Gaza

Debate between Hamish Falconer and Brendan O'Hara

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

We have raised those issues specifically, but I want to be straightforward with the House: we are clear that insufficient aid of all kinds is getting into Gaza. On almost any question that the House might put to me, there is insufficient aid, insufficient equipment and insufficient provisions for people to be existing in Gaza under those conditions, and we will continue to raise that with force with the Israelis for as long as that situation remains.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber) (SNP)]

Exactly a year ago, Lord Cameron, when talking about the situation in northern Gaza, told the Foreign Affairs Committee that

“the conflict is now effectively over there”.

Unfortunately, no one seems to have told Tel Aviv, because babies are still freezing to death and the last hospital has been destroyed. In that year, while the faces on the Government Benches might have changed, the UK’s complicity in the mass killing of Palestinians remains as it has been. Given that nothing has changed, does the Minister genuinely believe that in another year from now he will be able to say that continuing to arm the IDF was moral and legal?