Middle East

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Anna Sabine

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We are announcing these sanctions, which go further than ever before in targeting the organisations that are effectively facilitating, promoting, encouraging and developing illegal settlements. We want to continue to go further on sanctions and look at ways to strengthen our sanctions regime, so that we can go further and can put on additional pressure. Look, individual countries can take particular action on things such as sanctions in different ways—the trade issues we have discussed and so on—but the biggest impact will be made by building an international coalition and consensus. That is what happened in autumn around Gaza. That has been lost or reduced since then. We must rebuild that again, but this time we must ensure it includes the west bank as well as Gaza.

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

I was recently on a cross-party visit to Israel and Palestine. We met the Norwegian Refugee Council and talked about the issue of dual use items, where the Israeli Government do not let certain items into Gaza because they argue they can be used for terrorist purposes. That includes situations where young children are able to leave Gaza to get hearing implants in countries such as Jordan, but are then not allowed back into Gaza because the component parts are considered to be dual use items. What pressure can the Government bring to bear on the Israeli Government to prevent the weaponisation of this issue against the Gazan people?

[Yvette Cooper]

We have raised exactly this issue many times directly with the Israeli Government, the Civil-Military Coordination Center and the US Administration, because the hon. Lady is completely right: we are ending up with basic medical equipment being turned down because somehow it could be treated as dual use, or tent poles for basic shelter being turned down because somehow they could be dual use. That is deeply damaging and they are different standards to the ones that applied even 12 months ago. Even when there were previous ceasefires, we managed to get a lot more aid and support through. That is why it is crucial that aid is not weaponised. It is a basic human right and we will continue to argue strongly for an increase in humanitarian aid.