Middle East

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

As I set out earlier, the UK has introduced sanctions against individual members of the Netanyahu Government, something that very few countries across the world have actually done. We believe that is the right thing to do because of the seriousness of what they have done and the seriousness of the situation around illegal settlements. The hon. Gentleman is right that this is about international law more widely, but also, specifically, the peace and security of the middle east. We know that there is no alternative to the two-state solution, but ultimately, to make progress on Gaza, as we did for a brief period in autumn, we need to build up international consensus and not just look for what individual countries should do.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Let us just imagine that, this weekend in our capital city, there was a “great Russian real estate event” selling off Ukrainian land. Quite rightly and without hesitation, the Government would move to ban such an illegal event. This weekend in London, there is the Great Israeli Real Estate Event, openly advertising the illegal sale of land in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. Given that the Government rightly recognised the state of Palestine, surely we should now move to ban this event, which is selling off land illegally in Palestine.

[Yvette Cooper]

We are pursuing that particular event. If we find any cases where there are breaches of UK law, we will also pursue them. The wider issue is that nobody in the UK should be advertising illegal settlements. Nobody should be pursuing illegal settlements. No businesses or organisations should be getting involved in them. We have shown our willingness and determination to impose sanctions on organisations that do, just as we have set out today. We will continue to do further sanctions where we have the opportunity to do so, because support for illegal settlements is wrong.