West Bank: Forced Displacement Debate
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Jas Athwal
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West Bank: Forced Displacement
Jas Athwal Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) for securing this gravely urgent and important debate.
Last month, we welcomed the Government sanctions on Israeli Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. These two men, at the heart of the Israeli Government, have celebrated violence, ethnic cleansing and the forced displacement of Palestinians who have already lost so much; of Palestinians who have seen their family and friends murdered; of Palestinians who have seen their homes destroyed; of Palestinians who have seen the lives they once knew and loved turned into rubble. These vile men have not just celebrated such violations of international law: they are part of the Israeli authorities orchestrating the bombing, the killing and the destruction.
Some 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from the three refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem. These refugee camps are not homes, but a last resort, yet Palestinians have faced violence and brutality in them, too. The scale of suffering is unimaginable—40,000 Palestinians. Israeli authorities have been not just targeting refugee camps but demolishing homes. In the last two years, over 6,000 Palestinians have had to flee their homes as they were demolished, with the memories, the comforts and the safety of their homes cruelly turned to rubble.
Palestinians are being killed, starved into submission and stripped of every basic human necessity—left without even a sip of water or a scrap of bread to survive. Yet there is more rubble, more land grabs and more forced displacement, all celebrated by politicians in the Israeli Government. The Israeli Government’s end goal is, it would seem, to exterminate Gazans, destroy their land and wipe out any trace of Palestinian people’s existence.
When does this end? How does it end? I strongly urge the Government to go further and faster in pushing the pressure on Israel. I urge them to consider further sanctions on Israel, pressure Israel to end its denial of aid and recognise the state of Palestine immediately. We must keep the pressure on for an immediate and lasting ceasefire. This is how we start to end the brutality, how we give some respite and hope to the Palestinians who are still alive, and how we stand up for those who have nothing left.