UN Independent Commission of Inquiry (Gaza) Debate
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Mark Durkan
Main Page: Mark Durkan (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Foyle)Department Debates - View all Mark Durkan's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
UN Independent Commission of Inquiry (Gaza)
Mark Durkan Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
I commend the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for initiating the debate. Like other Members, I commend the Government for supporting last Friday’s resolution.
Unlike the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I do not see the report as unbalanced. Paragraph 668 states that
“the commission was able to gather substantial information pointing to serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law by Israel and by Palestinian armed groups. In some cases, these violations may amount to war crimes.”
That is what we should be addressing.
We should also be clear that we need to move forward. Other hon. Members have rightly said that arms sales continue. In the four months following the attacks, arms sales went to Israel, so more has been done to replenish its arsenals, which were depleted in these massive attacks, than has been done to repair Gaza’s battered, blasted and rubbled civic fabric. We also need to remember that the building of that civic fabric, which is now damaged, was supported by aid from this country and others. People have a right to defend health facilities, schools and civil infrastructure, which need to be protected.
The state of Israel needs to recognise that people in the international community are not making an anti-Israel case. Many of us totally oppose conflict and violence. I am not one of those who tries to pretend that there is military equivalence between the violence wreaked by Hamas and the massive violence wreaked by Israel. Equally, I do not pretend there is a moral difference between the violence of the two sides when it ends up killing innocent civilians and putting in dread people who should be living in peace together.
Today, however, we have heard the pretence that Israel has the right to treat Gaza as though it is a foreign state and to attack it on the basis that Israel is under threat from another state. That is from the same Members who then tell us that we in this House do not have the right to call for Palestine to be recognised as a state. How come people can recognise Palestine as a state when they want to justify violence—for military purposes—when the rest of us are not allowed to recognise it as a state for diplomatic and political purposes and to achieve a peaceful resolution?