Gaza Border Violence Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Paula Sherriff
Main Page: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)Department Debates - View all Paula Sherriff's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
Does the Minister, for whom I have the greatest respect, share my outrage and sorrow that the Israeli Defence Minister, the man in charge of the Israeli snipers killing Palestinians, has declared that there are no innocents in Gaza?
Alistair Burt
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s comments, which I appreciate very much. The statement she quotes is not one with which I agree. I think there have been other statements from Israeli Ministers that everyone in Gaza is a terrorist or that there is no such thing as a peaceful march. The truth is that a lot of people were taking part in the march for perfectly proper reasons: to express their concern about the despair and the hopelessness that we talked about earlier. Equally, it is true to say that there were those who knew that they could exploit it and did so. But the blanket condemnation of everyone in these circumstances does not help a proper understanding of those circumstances, and the hon. Lady is right to draw attention to such comments.