Military Co-operation with Israel

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of military collaboration with Israel.

It is a real honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. My speech for today’s important debate was written and completed yesterday. My arguments were factually and systematically constructed, and at the core of my speech was essentially the pursuit of truth, with very little emotional rhetoric. I woke up this morning just before dawn, like millions of other Muslims around the world, to begin fasting for another day with some food and water, when news broke of yet another violation of yet another peace deal, as Israelis rained down bombs on makeshift shelters, slaughtering men, women and children. Perhaps like me, those men, women and children were preparing for their day of fasting, but now they will never see another sunset.

The question is this: have we provided those lethal bombs, or the parts for the aircraft that are dropping them, and has our intelligence sharing led to the slaughter of a further 400 people last night? I beg the Minister, “Please do not sit here and say we are doing everything we can,” because that will add insult to injury. I accept that no one in the Labour Government has openly called for the Israel Defence Forces to be given a Nobel peace prize, but we have not even summoned the Israeli ambassador to express our concerns or contemplated economic sanctions because, in the words of our Foreign Secretary:

“Israel remains an important ally. We have an important trading relationship, worth £6.1 billion last year and involving 38,000 British jobs. I am sorry; any discussion of sanctions is just not correct.” —[Official Report, 14 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 152.]

I say to the family of the children who were burned alive last night that I am sorry; the Government say that we cannot afford to lose the money.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing this important and timely debate. He is right to refer to the Israeli airstrikes that killed over 400 people last night, shattering the fragile ceasefire and violating international law. He will also know that this has happened against the backdrop of the last two weeks, when we have seen a siege and blockade of Gaza, denying the people there food, water and electricity, which is collective punishment and in itself a war crime under international law. Does he agree that the silence of the international community is unacceptable? It is not a choice to act. The international community, including the UK, has obligations under international law and the UK Government must meet those obligations by imposing immediate sanctions on Israel.

[Shockat Adam]

I concur with the hon. Member completely. In the words of Martin Luther King:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Against that backdrop, let us continue. As I mentioned, today’s debate has been secured on no other premise than to find the truth. At this moment, the global order that we helped to build stands on the precipice of collapse. If we, as one of its architects, fail to uphold the principles that we established, we will also be complicit in its destruction. No one voted me in to resolve the conflict in the middle east overnight singlehandedly, or expects me to do so, but what the British people in their millions are demanding—rightfully and unequivocally—is moral clarity, a strategic commitment to ending hostilities and the absolute assurance that our nation is not complicit in facilitating war crimes.

Today’s debate will not delve into the historical archives of the conflict, which date from Balfour onwards—the Nakba, the occupation and the consistent humiliation, or the Hamas atrocities of 7 October. Instead, this is a legal and moral inquiry into our nation’s military co-operation with Israel in the face of credible allegations, including of genocide, now before the International Court of Justice. The ICJ has ruled that the occupation is illegal and warned that Israel’s actions in Gaza may constitute genocide. Under international law, the UK has an obligation not only to refrain from facilitating those crimes but to prevent them actively. Yet despite that duty, our country continues to engage in military co-operation with Israel. The question before us is very clear: are we upholding the rule of law?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) for securing the debate, as well as the authoritative way in which he introduced it. Last night, 400 more people died in Gaza as a result of direct bombardment in breach of the ceasefire. At the same time, Israel is denying access to food, water and supply of electricity to the people of Gaza, who are now going through the most ghastly time ever, on top of all the horrors they have been through over more than a year. So many people—69,000—are now known to be dead there, and more bodies are found every day that rubble is cleared away. Those who survive will forever live with survivor’s guilt for the fact that they survived while all their friends and family died around them. This is devastation beyond belief on live television all around the world. We watch people being starved to death in front of our very eyes, while there is food aplenty just a few kilometres away, deliberately denied to them by a decision of Israel. That is a war crime. We have to be quite clear about that.

In a statement in the Chamber yesterday, in response to the G7 summit that the Foreign Secretary had attended, I asked a specific question about international law and the war crimes that I believe Israel has committed. He, it seemed to me, conceded that Israel was in breach of international law. That is quite significant. Presumably, there are many Foreign Office briefings going around saying that Israel is in breach of those laws.

That leads to the second question: if we, as a country, knowingly accept that Israel is in breach of international law and continue to provide it with the weapons with which people can be killed in Gaza then we ourselves, as a country, also become complicit in breaches of international law. Those laws are there for a purpose, to try to prevent genocide and the crimes against humanity that are happening before our very eyes.

[Imran Hussain]

The right hon. Member makes a powerful case. Does he agree that the international dimensions of the situation are so clear, with the ICJ investigating genocide and the International Criminal Court investigating war crimes, even though it continues to be attacked for that, that there is no room for any nation to deny this serious international situation? Secondly, would he agree that silence, frankly, goes with hypocrisy and double standards?

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

Order. We are very short of time, so I ask Members to refrain from interventions, in order to get through every speaker.