MP, Labour’s Shadow
Foreign Secretary, responding to the killing of
Palestinians in Gaza today, said:
“We condemn unreservedly the Israeli government for their brutal,
lethal and utterly unjustified actions on the Gaza border, and
our thoughts are with all those Palestinians in Gaza whose loved
ones have been killed or injured as a result.
“These actions are made all the worse because they come not as
the result of a disproportionate over-reaction to one day's
protests, but as the culmination of six weeks of an apparently
systemic and deliberate policy of killing and maiming unarmed
protestors and bystanders who pose no threat to the forces at the
Gaza border, many of them shot in the back, many of them shot
hundreds of metres from the border, and many of them children.
“Throughout that six-week period, the UN's Secretary General has
been calling for an independent investigation into these
incidents, one that should urgently determine whether
international law has been broken, and hold the Netanyahu
government to account for their actions. The UK should lead calls
for the UN Security Council to order such an investigation today.
“These incidents must also be the catalyst for urgent and
concerted international pressure on the Netanyahu government to
lift the blockade on Gaza, and end Israel's illegal occupation of
the Palestinian territories. No longer
can Netanyahu act as a law unto himself, under the protection of
the Trump administration, whose decision to move the US embassy
to Jerusalem today has further inflamed the
situation.
“In the meantime, we urge the Israeli forces serving on the Gaza
border to show some long-overdue responsibility to their fellow
human beings, and stop this vicious and utterly avoidable
slaughter of peaceful protesters demanding the right to return to
their homes.”
