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Iraq

My Lords, every Foreign Office Minister who has responded to that question during the course of the conflict and subsequently has made the point that we believe that both sides should cease firing at each other, but that a unilateral pause by one side was unlikely to be sustainable as a matter of practical reality. I do not accept that that was an encouragement to one side to continue. The truth was that people were going to try to defend themselves. The question of proportionality arose in that context as long as rockets were being fired. It needed both sides to stop, and that was the appeal that the Government made.