Israel and Palestine

Tahir Ali Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

I welcome the Minister to his place. I look forward to working with him and I pay tribute to the work of his predecessor, who was called to the Chamber to discuss this issue many times. I also pay tribute to the consulate general in East Jerusalem, which I visited with a Select Committee, that did some truly fantastic work. I regret that it has been closed and I hope that it will be reopened swiftly.

The Liberal Democrats welcomed the Foreign Secretary’s statement last week designed to protect the two-state solution and the territorial integrity of the Palestinian state, that finally brought forward a ban on trade in goods and services with the illegal Israeli settlements. This was long overdue and the Liberal Democrats have called for it for years. Many of my constituents in Esher and Walton have also called for it, as did members of my Jewish community, some of whom have been campaigning for it. The Government must now ensure this ban is comprehensive and rigorously enforced, leaving no room for doubt as to the legal consequences for businesses involved in supporting or sustaining illegal settlements, and it must be enforced urgently.

The Government must outline how they will monitor and implement this ban, and commit to ensuring that the burden of proof is placed on Israeli authorities to provide verifiable certification that imported goods originated within the internationally recognised pre-1967 “green-line” borders, denying UK entry to any uncertified items originating from those illegal settlements. The Government should draw on the legal provisions set out in schedule 1 to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 to ensure that the ban on services is comprehensive, and they should introduce secondary legislation to amend SAMLA, placing a legal duty of due diligence on UK banks and financial institutions to verify that none of their direct operations, supply chains or customers is financing the purchase, construction or other service provision for illegal settlements.

We would like the Government to outline that any violation of these bans would result in enforcement measures under the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement. We call on the Government to impose a comprehensive ban on all arms exports to Israel, including the sale of F-35 components, and to expand sanctions on Ministers in the Israeli Government’s security cabinet who are encouraging settlement expansion, including Prime Minister Netanyahu himself.

A two-state solution represents the only political settlement that can deliver peace, dignity and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike. But Hamas, as a brutal terror organisation that threatens the survival of the state of Israel, can have no role in the future of Palestine. The UK, together with international partners, must develop a plan to progress urgently the disarming and disbanding of this terror group.

Preserving the territory of Palestine must be a foundation stone for the building of the Palestinian state, but another must be the strengthening of the governance capabilities of the Palestinian Authority. There are vital reforms that must take place within the Palestinian Authority to ensure that they can act as an effective state-building force. These must include strengthening the rule of law and protections for freedom of expression, cracking down on corruption and following through on ending the operation of the martyrs fund. The Government must support and hold the PA to account for the implementation of these reforms.

It is critical that the upcoming Palestinian elections are free, fair and open to advance further democratic reform across Palestine, so will Ministers work with President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to help deliver these, including ensuring access for international election monitors. We must also recognise that current Israeli restrictions are contributing to severe economic insecurity in the west bank. The Government must put pressure on the Israeli Cabinet to ensure that the Palestinian Authority have the revenues to which they are entitled and access to banking systems to support the economy.

The Israeli legislative elections in October are an opportunity to deliver a new vision for the country that reverses illegal settlement growth, prioritises diplomacy over territorial expansion and champions engagement with moderate partners in Palestine to deliver a better future for both communities. If the cycle of violence continues, it will only strengthen the voices of extremists on both sides who reject co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians. Meanwhile, the UK Government must use all the leverage they can, working with international partners and with the Israeli Government to stop the loss of civilian life in Gaza even after the ceasefire.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley) (Lab)]

The UK Government need to work with all their partners, but the reality is that unless America takes action, Israel is not going to back off from the atrocities it is carrying out. We need to push all the levers available to us to make sure that America is on side. The United Nations Security Council resolutions were almost all vetoed by America on its own. Unless America gets behind this peace plan, there will be no peace in Palestine or Israel.

[Monica Harding]

The hon. Member is absolutely right that America has a critical role to play in this conflict.

To give some numbers, as of 6 August, at least 300 children have reportedly been killed in Gaza in the 300 days since the ceasefire was announced—an average of one child a day. Gazans continue to remain in the grip of a man-made humanitarian catastrophe in the strip. The UK Government must do more to alleviate the humanitarian crises there and the one growing in the west bank. Over 2 million people in Gaza are living on around 30% of the territory, sheltering in unsafe conditions among destroyed buildings, rubble and waste. Some 70% of Gaza remains under IDF control. The UK must now apply genuine pressure to Netanyahu’s Government to ensure that food, aid, medical supplies and other essentials can reach Gazans now, without impediment and under the auspices of the UN, and that children and all civilians are protected.

I have called on UK Ministers to pressure Netanyahu’s Government to lift their arbitrary restrictions on non-governmental organisations supplying humanitarian aid to the strip. Last week, I noted in this Chamber that more than 1.4 million people in Gaza are acutely food insecure, yet Israel’s current interpretation of dual-use restrictions means that Palestinians are routinely and systematically denied essential items, including those needed for rehabilitation by the tens of thousands of people who have suffered life-changing injuries during this conflict.

The Foreign Secretary agreed that blocking those goods was appalling and seemed to suggest that it was a strategy. What does the Minister think is the strategy of the Israeli Government? Will he put pressure on them to undo those dual-good restrictions to allow the Palestinians to be self-sufficient, and to ensure that aid is sustainable and that they are no longer expected to live hand to mouth?

From October, the World Food Programme will cut the number of people it can feed in Gaza from 1.1 million to 600,000—not because the need has reduced, but because the money has run out. Those are people who will go without food, in a territory where 100,000 women and children are already expected to need treatment for malnutrition in the coming year. The UK is the ninth-largest donor to World Food Programme operations in Palestine, behind the USA, Germany and France. Our annual contribution fell from $18 million in 2024 to $9.3 million last year, and to just $4 million this year. That is a reduction of 78%. The Government cannot truly speak of their commitment to the Palestinian people while presiding over cuts like those. Will the Minister explain how those two things are reconcilable?

The brutal cuts to our aid budget have meant that our response to all humanitarian crises is limited. I have asked many Ministers in this House when we should expect at the very least a road map for restoring the 0.7% aid budget—a commitment that we in this House have enshrined in law. Again, can the Minister set out that timeline? Can he confirm that his party—the party of the Department for International Development and making poverty history—is committed to seeing our aid budget returned in full?

--- Later in debate ---

[Naz Shah]

Certainly, the Secretary of State highlighted in his remarks last Tuesday that the Government will seek advice from the ICJ and are continuously supporting those inquiries, but the hon. Member makes an important point.

Sadly, we live in a world where we can go about our daily lives and not always feel the seriousness of the pain in Gaza, or comprehend the magnitude of the killing. Putting those thousands of deaths to one side for a moment, as mothers and fathers, in this Chamber and beyond, can we not feel the pain being felt by the people of Gaza? I recently saw a video of a father who believed his child was dead, only to be reunited with his son more than two years later, having thought that he had been killed and buried beneath the rubble of Gaza’s destruction. He holds his son, pulls him close and cries uncontrollably, completely overwhelmed with emotion.

Can we imagine being that father? If we had lost our child, can we imagine the happiness, relief and overwhelming emotion of that moment of being reunited? That is one story that at least has some happiness at the end, and it makes us tear up because we imagine, “What if this was my child? What if this was your child?” But I ask: how do those mothers who will never see their beloved children again feel; those fathers who will never again hold their children tightly to their chests; those children growing up in Gaza with no mother, no father, no guardian and no shelter?

What is it like to live in a conflict zone where someone who is a journalist, like Hamza al-Dahdouh, can be killed in an Israeli airstrike, or, like Shireen Abu Akleh, can be shot dead while doing their job? Years later there is still no accountability to bring about justice for their families.

It is a conflict zone where someone can be a British, Australian, Canadian or Palestinian aid worker for the World Central Kitchen, trying to provide basic food and humanitarian assistance to people living among the rubble, and be killed by the IDF. The seven World Central Kitchen workers were travelling in a clearly marked convoy and co-ordinating their movements with the Israeli military. Three of those killed were British. They were returning from delivering food and humanitarian assistance to people in Gaza when their vehicles were struck. Their deaths show the extraordinary danger faced by aid workers trying to feed civilians in a warzone. Israel acknowledged serious failures in the strike and dismissed two officers, yet the families of the World Central Kitchen workers have called for independent accountability—that call is falling on deaf ears.

That is the treatment of journalists, aid workers and others whose very purpose is to help and bear witness. So where is the justice, the accountability and the protection of life for everyone in Gaza? God forbid you stand up and consistently speak out against the oppression, killing and destruction of the Palestinian people, and call for sanctions in line with international law and the position of successive British Governments for decades—the response is that Israel sanctions people like me.

[Tahir Ali]

If speaking up against war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide means being banned from entering that country, my hon. Friend should wear it as a badge of honour. She should be proud of that. However, should the rules be applied equally to Israeli diplomats in this House? When China banned our elected Members, the Speaker banned the Chinese ambassador from coming to this place. I would like that to be repeated in equal measure to the Israeli ambassador.

[Naz Shah]

My hon. Friend makes his point strongly, and I was coming on to reference China.

If the intention of sanctioning me was to silence me, it will not work. Israel cannot call itself the only democracy in the middle east and then sanction British parliamentarians for speaking out. China previously sanctioned Members of this Parliament for speaking out over human rights abuses in Xinjiang, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley (Tahir Ali) pointed out. Those sanctions did not silence British parliamentarians, and nor will these.

The justice and equality that I, and many others in this Chamber, fight for does not consider someone’s nationality, faith, ethnic background or who someone is. If more than 73,000 Palestinians are killed in Gaza; if Palestinian land in the occupied west bank is taken through illegal settlements; if Palestinians are being forcibly displaced and subjected to what many international experts and human rights organisations have described as ethnic cleansing; and if the viability of an independent state of Palestine, alongside a state of Israel, is being systematically undermined, eroding every opportunity for a two-state solution and lasting peace in the middle east, then I have a moral duty to speak up. And if innocent Jewish people are murdered, as they were by Hamas in the horrific attacks of 7 October, when around 1,200 people were killed, then I have the same moral duty to speak up and call that out.

Outside of this conflict, I have stood shoulder to shoulder with the minority Christian community in Jaranwala in Pakistan against their persecution. The justice that I believe in means that I have a moral duty to stand with them too.

Additionally, in response to the Government’s measures to prohibit trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied west bank, the Israeli Government announced that they would close the British consulate general in East Jerusalem. The measures were taken alongside France and Canada, with other international partners also supporting action to protect the two-state solution. Yet Israel chose to direct its retaliation principally against the United Kingdom. That is not the conduct that we should expect from an ally. It looks like an ally lashing out because Britain has chosen to uphold international law.

There is also a fundamental question about Israel’s legal authority to take that action. It is not the British embassy in Israel; it is the British consulate general, which represents the United Kingdom in Jerusalem, the west bank and Gaza, and conducts our relations with Palestine. We must see those three areas as one entity, because that is what they are.

East Jerusalem is occupied territory. The International Court of Justice has confirmed that Israel holds the status of an occupying power there, and that Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is not internationally recognised. Israel may exercise the practical power to force the consulate’s closure, but practical control is not the same as lawful sovereignty. By what legal right, then, do the Israeli Government seek to close a British diplomatic mission in occupied East Jerusalem?

I also want to bring to the House’s attention today’s report by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. It is the most comprehensive report to date on the west bank, gathering evidence from over three decades of Israel’s human rights violations and 2,000 testimonies since October 2023. The report is called “The Elimination Project”. It shows the correlation between the widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure, the network of roadblocks and checkpoints, the attacks by armed settler militias, the expulsion of communities and the unprecedented expansion of settlements, outposts and farms. B’Tselem says that these are not separate phenomena; rather, they are part of an Israeli project to eliminate the Palestinian collective, in order to establish permanent Jewish Israeli control over the entire area.

The Israeli elimination project, according to B’Tselem,

“did not begin with the current government,”

but since late 2022 a new phase has been entered, with faster and much broader deployment. Given that report today, I ask the Minister whether the Government will expedite the measures announced last week—the ban on trade with the occupied west bank and illegally occupied areas. This is really important.

The Foreign Secretary made it clear to this House last week that Britain is not powerless when international law is being torn apart. Once again, I commend the Prime Minister and the Government for demonstrating the power of international diplomacy, and for leading action, alongside France, Canada and other international partners, against illegal Israeli settlements and those who profit from them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

Last week’s statement from the Foreign Secretary marked a significant moment in British policy on Israel and Palestine. I congratulate Ministers on those changes. For years, the Liberal Democrats have argued that simply declaring the west bank settlements illegal while otherwise continuing business as usual was not enough. The Government appear to have conceded that words need to be matched with actions. The Government agree that things have gone on for long enough and have recognised the occupation as unlawful. They have recognised that a ban on imports is necessary and that further sanctions on extremist settlers are required. Those are positive steps, but the reality in the region remains bleak.

Benjamin Netanyahu and his Cabinet have rejected proposals for peace and declared that a Palestinian state will not be recognised while he remains Prime Minister. At the same time, Hamas remains a terrorist organisation that has shown no convincing sign that it will disarm or dismantle itself. Hamas is a transnational actor and a transnational threat, as indeed we saw just last week with the arrest of seven suspected Hamas members in Germany as part of a terror plot.

On the ground in Israel and Palestine, the prospects for a two-state solution are being systematically undermined. The Foreign Affairs Committee saw that when we visited the Jordan valley last year. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran), saw as I did how escalating settler violence meant villages were subjected to intimidation. Now, with the announcement of the E1 settlement, there are blatant attempts to make a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

There has been some debate tonight about the timing of the Government’s announcement, with a suggestion that somehow they might be meddling in the affairs of Israel as it approaches its election. I have to disagree with the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley). If the Government are convinced that more sanctions are required, they have a responsibility to introduce them as soon as they make that determination and not await the internal democratic electoral affairs of the Israeli state. Indeed, to have delayed would have been interference in the domestic affairs of Israel.

I welcome the fact that the Government have finally acted. I welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have acknowledged that the previous Administration did not go far enough. I also welcome the decision to ban settlement goods connected to settlement expansion, but I call for the Government to go further and adopt a ban on all services and trade with those settlements, just as the Dutch Government have done. If the settlements are unlawful, the financial and commercial structures that sustain them should enjoy no benefit from trade with the UK.

Sanctions are a similar story. The Government have recently sanctioned extremist figures such as National Security Minister Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Smotrich, who have repeatedly demonstrated their disdain not just for a Palestinian state but for the Palestinian people themselves. These sanctions should be extended to all members of the Cabinet who are complicit in illegal settlement expansion, forced displacement and the ongoing erosion of a Palestinian state, and that includes Netanyahu himself. Accountability cannot rest just with the most extremist members of the security cabinet if others are enabling the same agenda.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that Israel’s forced displacement of more than 33,000 Palestinians in the west bank could amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. It is the largest and longest displacement crisis since 1967. Meanwhile in Gaza, the scale of death and destruction has shocked the conscience of the world. This Government say that there is increasing evidence that war crimes may have been committed and that they support the ICJ in reaching its determination in relation to genocide. I understand that the Government desire to defer to a competent court, but I note that it took nine years between the atrocities being carried out against the Yazidi people in 2014 and the recognition by the British Government in 2023 that Daesh had committed a genocide.

Hamas remain a terrorist organisation and there can be no future peace while armed groups backed by Iran retain the capacity to threaten Israeli civilians and sabotage any political settlement. Their disarmament and disbandment must be part of any lasting solution.

[Tahir Ali]

On the issue of disarmament, should we not also be calling for Israel’s disarmament, given the atrocities that have been committed? Previous Governments have intervened in the middle east to take action on human rights abuses and protect international trade routes. Is it not about time that military action was taken against Israel as well?

[Richard Foord]

The peace plan requires the IDF to pull back from Gaza just as Hamas disarm, so I see the onus on the IDF to pull back, just as Hamas must disarm. As far as this state is concerned, Hamas are a terrorist organisation, and I do not draw any equivalence between the state of Israel, internationally recognised, and Hamas as a proscribed terrorist organisation.

Yes, last week’s shift in British Government policy represents a welcome change in direction. It is a break from years of denial, hesitation and inaction, but the British Government have further to go. They have further to go before Britain is fully matching its commitment to international law, accountability and the two-state solution that remains the path to a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians.