Israel and Palestine

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

Last week represented an important change in Britain’s approach to Israel and Palestine, and I welcome it. For the first time, this Government acknowledged the reality staring us in the face: that the occupation is unlawful, that illegal settlements are destroying any prospect of Palestinian statehood, and that in parts of the west bank Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed by what the Foreign Secretary himself called settler terrorists. Those are not my words; they are now the words of His Majesty’s Government. That makes the question before us today all the more urgent. If we finally recognise what is happening, why are we still refusing to confront those who are responsible for making it happen?

This is not simply the work of a few rogue extremists. Under this Israeli Government, more settlements have been approved in four years than in the previous 20. Some 800,000 settlers now live across the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Foreign Secretary himself told the House that settlers had attacked Palestinian communities under Israeli military protection, and that Israeli Government Ministers had supported ethnic cleansing. We need to stop pretending that the settlements are somehow separate from the Israeli state, because the settlements are a monster of its own making. By tinkering around the edges with sanctions on settlers and leaving the Government at the heart of their enterprise untouched, this Labour Government are trying to tiptoe around the raindrops and not get wet; but, like the last Government, they will be soaked in complicity, and the sanctions do nothing to punish the real architects of this apartheid.

Settlers are murdering Palestinians with IDF protection. The Israeli Government are giving them the land to invade in the first place. If we are serious about ending illegal settlements, where is the ban on trade with the nation of Israel itself? Government policy now contains an extraordinary contradiction. We will sanction the people who finance settlement construction; we will penalise companies that build settlements, and ban the products coming from within them; yet when the Israeli state allocates the land, approves the plans and sends armed forces to protect settler terrorists, the consequences suddenly stop.

As I said only last week in a question to the Foreign Secretary, this is a litmus test of our most basic principles. If those who help to establish illegal settlements should be sanctioned, why not the officials who authorise them? Why not the institutions that finance them, and the state contractors that build them? Why should our wider trading relationship remain untouched when settlement expansion is official Israeli Government policy?

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

The July 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice declared that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories was unlawful under international law and that Israel must end the occupation as quickly as possible, stop all settlement activity, and evacuate all settlers. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is time to honour that advisory opinion, and does he also agree that we should make a distinction between the actions of the Israeli Government and the state of Israel itself?

[Ayoub Khan]

I agree wholeheartedly with the first part of the hon. Member’s intervention—of course we should uphold international law—but I am a little confused by the latter part. It is the Israeli state that drives policy, and one cannot distinguish between the Israeli state and the Israeli Government. I entirely agree that we must not conflate them with the Israeli people, because that would be wrong. I suspect that all Members in this House want to see the scourge of antisemitism tackled, as well as anti-Muslim hate. There was a massive increase in anti-Muslim hate following 7 October, across the city of Birmingham and across the country, and we must do whatever we can in this House—unified by one principle, the principle of humanity—to ensure that where we see wrong we address it, and do so without fear or favour.

As I have said before, one of the prime reasons why we have independent Members of Parliament, why protesters came on to the streets, and why students at universities are protesting is the fact that they are not antisemitic. Of course, I accept that there have been occasions when there has been antisemitism, and we must all condemn it, but in the main, all those people were championing one aspect: the freedom of the Palestinians, who have been under oppression for so many decades.

I return to my original point. We must all work together to prevent the rise of antisemitism in this country, as well as anti-Muslim hate, and we must all try to address that conflation. We have witnessed, for example, the suppression of doctors’ freedom of speech by their regulators when all they have done is question some of the actions that have been taken. Israel cannot claim to be a victim—not the people of Israel, but the state—when it prevents journalists from entering. We should say, “If you are open and transparent, allow journalists to come in, and allow them to document what is taking place.” However, I suspect that Israel will be unwilling to do that, precisely because of the genocide that we are witnessing.

In Gaza, more than 73,000 Palestinians are officially recorded as dead—murdered. Homes have been reduced to rubble, aid has been obstructed, and entire bloodlines have been wiped out. I have no hesitation in calling out what everyone is seeing with their own eyes: a genocide, livestreamed for the world to see. Netanyahu’s Government have demonstrated an extraordinary contempt, time and again. Extraordinary reporting raises profoundly disturbing questions about what Netanyahu knew before that attack. According to Haaretz, the President of the United Arab Emirates warned him a week and a half earlier that Hamas were planning a major operation, and he did not pass that warning to his security chiefs. How absurd is the proposition that a Prime Minister informed of an imminent threat would not advise his chief security officer? Either he did not believe the information or

“he wanted to see what they could plan so that then he could come down hard”.

Those are not my words; they are the words of none other than Hillary Clinton.

We were told for years that the destruction would stop when hostages were released—Netanyahu said the war could end if Hamas surrendered and returned them—yet Haim Rubinstein, a spokesperson for the Israeli Hostages and Missing Families Forum, said as far back as 2025 that Israel rejected an early proposal to release civilian hostages if the IDF did not enter Gaza. This is the regime that we continue to do business with and are choosing to stand by—a far-right Government who have refused peace at every turn and in its place opt for bloodshed and gaslighting. Yet for far too long, western Governments have taught Netanyahu one lesson and one lesson only: condemnations will come, statements will be issued and red lines will be crossed, but meaningful consequences will not follow.

Last week’s announcement can be remembered in one of two ways: it can be the moment Britain finally changed course, or it can become another intolerable status quo, with tougher words, narrowly drawn sanctions, business as usual elsewhere and yet another year in which the prospect of Palestinian statehood crumbles under the weight of Israel’s never-ending bloodshed. Acknowledging the problem cannot be the end of British policy. If we truly believe Palestinians have the right to self-determination, this must be only the start, because as the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) said, time is not on our side, and we cannot and must not wait until there is no Palestine left to recognise.