Israel and Palestine

Debate between Sam Tarry and Peter Dowd

Monday 14th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for securing this important debate at a crucial fork in the road for Israel’s Government, following Naftali Bennett’s replacing Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister yesterday. I hope that the new Administration will listen to the voices of Governments around the world on the issue of justice in Palestine and urgently change direction, because for too long peace and the hope of peace has been crushed by military might. I know that a large number of my Labour colleagues wish to speak in the debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), whose constituency had the highest number of signatories, alongside mine, to the petition that urges the UK Government to recognise the state of Palestine.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed millions of people marching in almost every major city in the world. Israel’s illegal occupations, annexations and bombardment of the Palestinian people and those trying simply to exist in Gaza can no longer be ignored. Indeed, there is an enormous sense of anger and injustice in my constituency of Ilford South, which has the highest number of signatories to the petition, at around 6,000. Individually, 5,000 people in my constituency have written to me. This has happened during the covid pandemic, which shows that people care deeply about what is happening around the world. My constituents rightly feel that human rights abuses should be challenged, be they in Kashmir, Myanmar, Yemen or, indeed, in Gaza.

Although people are rightly concerned about events in the middle east, I want to be clear that it is never acceptable for members of the Jewish community, both in my Ilford South constituency and across the UK, to be subject to criticism, abuse and attacks because of the actions of the Israeli Government. It is clear that there is a huge groundswell of support for justice as the escalation of this conflict has continued, with the needless deaths of civilians on both sides, the recent illegal seizure of land and the incendiary storming of the al-Aqsa mosque. The proliferation of evictions, demolitions and new settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories not only runs counter to international humanitarian law, including the fourth Geneva convention; it also serves to make a viable two-state solution ever more distant.

The Labour party has long urged both sides to come together to ensure a just two-state solution that enables Palestinians and Israelis to peacefully co-exist. I have travelled to Israel and Palestine extensively, on more than half a dozen occasions, and I have seen at first hand the conditions in which Palestinians are forced to live. However, I have also met many progressive activists and politicians in Israel, and I encourage Members from both sides of the House to forge links with those groups and with partners for peace on both sides of the divide. As we have seen in recent weeks, they were highly effective in helping to bring the latest conflict to an end. The many powerful protests in the likes of Lod, Ramla and Umm al-Fahm show that hundreds of thousands of Israelis are united with the Palestinian people in their condemnation of the events in Palestine and Gaza.

The UK Government should therefore consider every possible avenue to put pressure on the Israeli Government. That includes reviewing the £360 million-worth of arms that they sell to Israel, and challenging—

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order. Can you wind up, please?

[Sam Tarry]

Indeed, Mr Dowd. The UK Government have an historical obligation, as do all of us on both sides of the House, to support the state of Palestine in coming into being, and to ensure a future of hope, in which two peoples can co-exist on the same land.