Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Naz Shah Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Much has been made of this Queen’s Speech but it does not meet the challenges of post-pandemic Britain and continues to illustrate the weak foundations of public services after more than a decade of austerity, which impacts on my constituency. My constituents are frankly sick and tired of this Government failing to address historical inequalities after 10 years of austerity that impact on education, jobs, health and social care, housing and economic recovery in my constituency in a post-covid world.

Speaking of the world, the Queen’s Speech also fails to address the international challenge and our having a foreign policy that rises to the challenge we are seeing played out on our screens today. We sit here in the mother of Parliaments, the House of Commons, living under the rule of law, upholding fundamental freedoms for all who live in our green and pleasant land without any fear and without having our rightful connection to it denied. Palestinians do not live in the same security; rather, they live in constant fear of being forcibly dispossessed from their ancestral homes by the Israeli army. They have been abandoned by the international community, and they have been abandoned by us.

This weekend was the 73rd anniversary of what the Palestinians call the Nakba—the catastrophe; the day that marked the beginning of their dispossession in 1948. That dispossession continues—by bombs, by mob lynching, by expulsions, all against innocent Palestinian civilians. These crimes are the root cause of the tragic violence we are seeing across the Holy Land today. When this Government urge the restoration of calm in Palestine, they must remember that Palestinians have been robbed of their calm for 73 years, with the occupation’s checkpoints, the siege in Gaza and the various types of discrimination against Palestinians across the Holy Land.

Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem, international groups such as Human Rights Watch, and others have concluded from painstaking analysis that the Israeli Government stand guilty of the internationally defined crime of apartheid. I ask: how should that affect our relationship with Israel? This is not a conflict with two equal opposing sides; rather, one people dominates the other through illegal occupation, siege, dispossession and discrimination.

If we claim that there are two equal sides, why is it that we recognise only one while we have yet to recognise Palestine? Israel is the occupier of the Palestinian Territories, not the other way round. Israel has placed Gaza under siege, not the other way round. Israel is dispossessing Palestinians with illegal settlements, not the other way round. Israel applies policies of apartheid, not the other way round.

The just and peaceful solution we all seek will not be possible until the UK and its allies recognise this imbalance and take effective action to address it. The violence will not end until impunity does. The Government’s support for a ceasefire in Gaza is welcome and vital to preventing further needless loss of life, but there will be no sustainable and just peace in Palestine and Israel until all are equal and accountable before the law.

The Government must therefore urgently support the following actions: an independent investigation by the International Criminal Court into the situation in Palestine; a special session of the Human Rights Council looking into potential war crimes and accountability based on human rights; a review, in line with our own laws, of all licences issued for arms and equipment used by the Israeli security forces that may be used, directly or indirectly, to commit acts of internal repression, external aggression, including de facto annexation, or violations of international humanitarian law; and an end the empty words of a two-state solution while recognising only one state; and, finally, recognition of the state of Palestine.