Gaza: Healthcare System Support

Lord Polak Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for securing the debate. I was honoured to serve on the justice committee that she chaired. I agree with her on most things—the treatment of the Uighurs, for example—but on this issue, it is different.

I could not be more delighted, as the noble Baroness was, at the prospect of seeing Emily Damari and all the other hostages released, but I remind noble Lords that Israel is not negotiating with the UK, nor with the UAE. It is having to make an agreement with a terrorist group, Hamas, which chillingly vowed yesterday to repeat 7 October. We will no doubt hear in the next hour distorted figures and distorted so-called facts provided by the Hamas propaganda machine. But let us be clear: Hamas is a terrorist group with scant regard for the welfare of the Palestinian people.

Do not take my words, take the words of Fatah’s statement of 11 January condemning Hamas for gambling with the interests and resources of the Palestinian people to the benefit of the Iranian regime, and holding Hamas responsible for the destruction of Gaza, in particular concerning the protection and healthcare of the population.

I have three questions for the Minister. Will she confirm that, according to HMG, Hamas will have no role whatever in the reconstruction of Gaza? We are likely also to hear today, by the way, about how Israel systematically dismantled the healthcare system in Gaza, and very little about Hamas using hospitals as command centres and ammunition stores, so will the Minister please confirm to the House that Israel has provided 13 working field hospitals in Gaza, in co-operation with international partners, since the beginning of the conflict? Finally, will she confirm to the House that 3,259 sick and wounded civilians and their escorts have been evacuated from Gaza? Israel cares, Hamas does not.