Middle East

Debate between Rachel Hopkins and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the 20-point plan included the development of an international stabilisation force that was effectively about bringing peacekeepers into Gaza. That has not yet happened, partly because there simply has not been enough progress in certain areas, as well as in respect of the humanitarian aid, which is just basic.

We have promoted the argument that the decommissioning of Hamas’s weapons needs to reflect the experience in Northern Ireland. Some of the processes are not simple, but we need to get them started—it is essential to get that started. We also need a practical approach to allowing the Palestinian committee to start to operate in Gaza, and to providing the support and training for Palestinian police to be able to operate in Gaza. We have to get those security conditions right so that we can bring in the ISF where other countries have said they would be willing to do so, but getting to that point requires more commitment and energy, particularly from the Israeli Government, but also more broadly, as part of the 20-point plan, so that we can reach the point the hon. Gentleman suggests.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement and the fourth package of sanctions against the groups supporting the extremist Israeli settlers. I also welcome the strengthened guidance that no UK businesses should have any financial or economic links with illegal settlements—although many of my constituents would prefer to see an outright ban, because they are seeing the continued expansion of illegal settlements. Just last week, Minister Smotrich announced more than 2,000 new homes in and around Jerusalem, Nablus and Hebron. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is an absolute violation of international law and that it does nothing to secure a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine?

[Yvette Cooper]

The expansion of the illegal settlements is not only deeply wrong, because Palestinians are being forced from their own land, sometimes in the most brutal of circumstances, but deliberately designed to try to make it impossible to ever get to a two-state solution. That is the purpose for some of those involved, and we should be very clear on that and call it out for what it is. That is why it is so important not only to strengthen the condemnation of the illegal settlements and the expansions, but to be clear that we cannot stand back and allow what could effectively become an annexation. That needs to be linked to the 20-point plan. My point has always been that we will not sustain the ceasefire in Gaza that was rightly brokered by the US in the autumn, or achieve peace and security for Palestine and Israel, if we end up with such devastating consequences for the west bank and if we do not have a track to get to a two-state solution.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rachel Hopkins and Yvette Cooper

Monday 24th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Net migration quadrupled during the period when the former Home Secretary was in government, in the space of just four years—the most shocking loss of control of our borders. We saw visas and overseas recruitment shoot up at exactly the same time as training here in the UK fell. That is why this Government will publish a White Paper that sets out measures to reduce net migration, including by ensuring that employers recruit and train here in the UK.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

T10. On Friday night, I joined Bedfordshire police officers on a ride-a-long to see first hand the great work they do to help vulnerable people. However, the Policing Minister knows that Bedfordshire police rely heavily on specific grants to tackle serious, violent and organised crime. Will she confirm that those grants will continue, and when we might we hear about that?