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Gaza

I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise this issue today. Such a debate is timely not only because of the current situation but because of the information that I bring following the all-party group visit to Gaza last week. For the sake of clarity and the avoidance of doubt, let me explain the trip. On 15 February, I was part of an all-party group that entered Gaza via the Erez crossing at the north-east of the strip. The attempt to enter began at 9 am and was eventually successful in the late afternoon. We left on the afternoon of 17 February, having spent two nights in the area. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who led the delegation, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) and to the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather). I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) and the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) would be here in the Chamber today if they could because we were all so profoundly shocked by the things that we saw. The trip was funded by the Welfare Association, which is a respected non-governmental organisation and charity that is in receipt of Government funds, including £300,000 under the current emergency aid programme. It was efficiently organised by the Council for Arab-British Understanding. Our tours in Gaza were supervised by the Welfare Association or the UN. I want to be as clear as possible about the brief of the visit, which was exclusively humanitarian. We were there, in part, to see the aid projects that the British Government have funded. I am aware that my hon. Friend the Minister also made a visit to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on 18 January, on the day of the ceasefire, and that a substantial aid package of some £27 million has been announced by the Government. I do not wish to assume a lack of knowledge by the Minister, but I hope that, at least in my preliminary comments, I can talk about the situation in Gaza from the point of view of an eye witness. I can also talk about the testimonies of eye witnesses to the bombardment of Gaza. Such testimonies may indicate the scale of the problems and the difficulties that present themselves to the delivery of aid. The first and most obvious of those is that it is still difficult to get in and out of Gaza, because of the border restrictions imposed by the Israelis, let alone to bring relief to a 1.5 million people. At the time of my hon. Friend's visit, it was the end of 23 days of the worst violence that has been seen in the Gaza strip since 1967. By conservative estimates, it left 1,285 people dead, 82 per cent. of whom were civilians. If one excludes police officers from that figure—and I do not see why we should—civilians accounted for 70 per cent. of that number, 22 per cent. of whom were children. Some 4,336 people were wounded in the attacks, 43 per cent. of whom were women and children. Most of those injuries were not minor. They were serious injuries that require, in some cases, amputations and long and complex medical treatment. That is leaving aside the trauma and the psychological effect that many have suffered as a result of living in a very confined position. Many people describe Gaza as ““the world's largest prison””, and there was no route of escape during the intensive bombardment. About 2,500 homes were destroyed. We visited Beit Hanoun and Izbet Abd Rabo and saw for ourselves entire villages that had been destroyed. At Abd Rabo, 5,000 people had been made homeless in one village and 200 killed. The whole civil apparatus of Gazan society has been destroyed: 60 police stations, 30 mosques and 29 schools. More than 120 commercial buildings have been completely destroyed and 200 partially destroyed. I stood in the ruins of the Parliament building—the Legislative Council—and wondered what the purpose was of destroying Gaza's newly democratic institution. When we asked why such acts of wanton destruction had taken place, we always heard that it was for the Israelis to explain. We visited four hospitals, which had come under varying degrees of attack, at al-Quds, al-Wafa, al-Hilal and al-Awada. I do not wish to go into detail about the degree of criminality involved because it is perhaps not a matter for this debate, but it may be for another debate. None the less, it is important to bear in mind the enormity of the offences that have been committed by the Israeli defence force—or Israeli occupation force—during this time. According to the human rights organisations that we spoke to, including the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which is a widely respected organisation, such actions may well amount not only to war crimes but to crimes against humanity and to ethnic cleansing. The organisations spoke about the targeting of civilians in their homes, the use of civilians as human shields, the killing of people in cold blood and the targeting of medical staff. I have already said that the overwhelming majority of people killed during the attack were civilian, and also that entire areas were razed to the ground. I raise such points, because they emphasise the difficulty that the Government will face when they have to deal with the Israeli authorities over the supply of humanitarian aid. Moreover, such points are relevant because although we have no new Government in Israel at the moment, we are anticipating a Government that is far to the right of the Government who led the invasion and who may, unfortunately, include racist and fascist elements.