“Hezbollah and Hamas are a cancer in the areas where they operate”, said Shadow Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell during a Government Statement session in the House of Commons on Monday. “Israel has every right to defend itself against evil terrorists, who are not interested in compromise or in political solutions and who use the legitimate plight of Palestinians to justify barbarism”, he added.
Rt. Hon. Andrew Mitchell MP addressed Israel’s strikes on military sites in Iran on Saturday morning, when the Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck 20 targets including advanced long-range air defence systems, military bases, a former nuclear test site, and storage and manufacturing sites for the production of ballistic missiles. He stated that “Israel’s response to the attack launched by Iran earlier this month has rightly been described as proportionate. Israel has the right to defend itself, and it has done so in a precise and targeted way”, highlighting the fact that “the onus must surely now be on Iran to desist from any retaliatory action that will pull the region further up the ladder of escalation”.
“Iran’s direct missile attacks on Israel are but one front in its campaign against the Jewish state, which we know it is intent on wiping off the face of the earth. Iran’s continuing funding for and support of its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon and Hamas proxies in Gaza show what a scourge the IRGC is and how far its tentacles have spread”, continued the MP for Sutton Coldfield.
Nick Timothy MP said that “today, as on other recent occasions, we have heard Labour Members suggest that Israel is somehow conducting a war of annihilation, extermination and genocide. Although we all accept that there is obviously much suffering in Gaza, this terminology is completely inappropriate and inaccurate, and it is repeated by the protesters and lawbreakers who are intimidating British Jews, as we saw again this weekend”.
1922 Committee Chair Bob Blackman CBE MP raised Emily Damari, “the last British hostage held in Gazza”, who was “shot, abducted and is still in captivity”, “literally on her own”. The senior Conservative MP said that “the visit by the high-level Qatari delegation that is due to arrive in a few weeks’ time” is a “positive move we could make” in order to “prevail on Qatari officials to do all they can to get Hamas to release the last British hostage and all the hostages who are held in captivity in Gaza”.
“None of this dreadful cycle, which began on 7 October, would have happened but for Iran’s determination to derail the prospect of peace and recognition between Saudi Arabia and Israel”, pointed out Rt. Hon. Sir Julian Lewis MP.
Danny Kruger MBE MP agreed that “conflict is being driven by Iran, using a network of proxies in the Arab world”, before raising that “Israel is increasingly thinking that it needs to go after the head of the octopus, rather than defending itself against the tentacles”.
Rt. Hon. Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP also warned of “the billions that Iran has spent that could have gone towards health, building and quality of life but instead went towards tunnels, missiles and violence all over the region”, reminding the Foreign Secretary that he “rightly called for Iran not just to be sanctioned”, but to have “all actions and involvement with Iran made illegal: proscribed”, back in 2023. He called on the Labour Government to “proscribe Iran completely, and to say that this must never happen again”.
Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza “pretty much led to what happened on 7 October”, said Rt. Hon. Sir Alec Shelbrooke MP, underlining the need “to ensure Israel” that a two-state solution “will not be used as an attack platform to murder so many people once more”.
Rt. Hon. Dr. Andrew Murrison MP said that “it is important to acknowledge that Israel is often first on the scene when there is a humanitarian crisis internationally, and is generous, even in countries that do not recognise it”, before raising the need for the UK to “ensure that its generosity is not diverted into the hands of proxies, particularly Hamas and Hezbollah”.
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Conservative MPs highlight Hamas infiltration of UNRWA in Urgent Question session
In an Urgent Question session on Tuesday about “the legislation approved by the Israeli Knesset to ban UNRWA”, Shadow International Development Minister Dame Rt. Hon. Harriett Baldwin MP highlighted that “there are other ways that exist to deliver aid without UNRWA, and that the UK stands ready to help in every way possible with its extensive expertise to reach the most vulnerable”, after telling the House of Commons that “despite the pause on future funding to UNRWA that was implemented by the last Government, [the Government] remained absolutely committed to getting on with aid delivery”.
A pair of laws were passed late on Monday in the Knesset – Israel’s Parliament – to ban UNRWA from operating in Israel and prevent Israeli authorities from engaging with UNRWA’s work in Gaza and the West Bank. A large majority of 92-10 Knesset Members (MKs) voted in support of one of the bills, which banned UNRWA’s operations in Israel, while 97-9 supported the bill banning authorities from being in contact with UNRWA. The legislation will take effect in 90 days unless challenged in Israel’s courts.
1922 Committee Chair Bob Blackman CBE MP said that in the run-up to the Knesset’s vote banning UNRWA activity in Israel, the UN body confirmed that their employee, Mohammed Abu Itiwi, “actually led the attack on kibbutz Re’im where the British national Aner Shapiro was brutally murdered, after he had thrown back seven grenades to those attacking him”. Until those involved in the attack on 7th October are “rooted out”, “of course there is mistrust in UNRWA to deliver the aid we want to see”, Mr Blackman added.
“Of the 12,000 UNRWA employees, about one in five are members of Hamas, and almost 500 of them are members of Hamas’s military wing”, pointed out Rt. Hon. Richard Holden MP, before calling on the Government to “give UK taxpayers a guaranteed assurance that Hamas has no links with UNRWA in aid delivery in Gaza”.
Greg Smith MP said that “it is clear that UNRWA is deeply infiltrated by Hamas”, after raising that “terror infrastructure has been found in 32 UNRWA facilities in Gaza, we have seen a 3,000-strong Telegram Group of UNRWA teachers openly celebrating the 7th October attack. Israeli intelligence shows up to 10 percent of UNRWA staff have affiliations to terror organisations and a Palestinian eyewitness has borne witness to the fact that he saw an UNRWA school director selling food meant for civilians at $100 a carton”. Mr Smith added that the Government should “work with organisations that can be trusted to deliver aid into the hands of civilians and not into the hands of terrorists”.
“Hamas are deeply integrated” within UNRWA, the “civilian and humanitarian infrastructure of Gaza”, highlighted Danny Kruger MP, adding that the terror group is “hiding their soldiers in hospitals”. He called out the Government’s decision “simply to lament this decision and to criticise Israel, and to threaten as of yet unspecified consequences”, instead urging “something practical” by “working with Israel and other partners to develop an alternative supply route and accept that UNRWA isn’t going to be that mechanism [to distribute aid]”.
Shadow International Affairs Spokesman Lord Callanan: Israel conducted “proportionate, precise and targeted” strikes on Iran
In the House of Lords repeat of the Government Statement on Tuesday, Shadow International Affairs Spokesman Lord Callanan said that “Israel’s response to the missile attack launched by Iran earlier this month was proportionate, precise and targeted”, calling the Labour Government’s decision to suspend some licences for the sale of arms to Israel “disgraceful”. Lord Callanan raised that “some 100 hostages remain in captivity, including Emily Damari, a British national”, adding that the situation is “utterly unacceptable”.
The Shadow Minister warned of Iran’s “malign influence”, which has “made it very clear that [Iran] intends to destroy Israel’s right to exist, and its funding of Hezbollah shows that that intent has not changed”.
“No country in the world” would allow the terror group’s “continuous rocket attacks”, with Hezbollah “violating international law by launching rockets and missiles at Israeli towns and displacing tens of thousands of Israeli citizens but doing so in flagrant breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which clearly calls for the withdrawal of Hezbollah and other forces from Lebanon south of the Litani [river]”, said Lord Callanan.
“UNRWA is not fit for purpose”, added Lord Leigh of Hurley, before underlining that “UNRWA is responsible for less than 13% of all aid in Gaza”. Lord Leigh raised the former Hamas leaders Fatah Sharif Abu Al-Amin and Mohammad Abu Itiwi, who were “both members of UNRWA, which UNRWA recognised” and recalled “a parliamentary trip to Kerem Shalom, and we saw for ourselves the much-needed and vital aid that was not able to be delivered. The lorries were piled up on the Gaza side. Much of that aid has been stolen under the nose of UNRWA by Hamas, to be sold on the black market thereafter”.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon said that when faced with challenges, the previous Government “worked with other partners… I implore the Government to look at innovative solutions to the situation in north Gaza, including with Jordan”.
“More vessels have been attacked by the Houthis”, said Lord Bellingham, who also raised the issue last Thursday in a House of Lords debate on the Red Sea Houthi attacks. He was joined by Lord Geddes and Lord Sandhurst KC, who called for “arming vessels” to counter the threat of Iran’s Houthi proxy group in Yemen.
“One day Iranian missiles and drones rain down on Tel Aviv, the next day on Kyiv. One day Iran funds Hamas, the next day it arms Putin. One could be forgiven for thinking it was no coincidence that the Iranian-backed attacks on Israel last October distracted the world from the Iranian-armed Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine. The co-ordinated assault on freedom requires a suitably co-ordinated response. The existing sanctions, and the threat of more, are clearly not acting as a sufficient deterrent on their own. It is time to stop pulling our punches with these perpetrators of evil before it is too late”, said Lord Banner KC in a separate House of Lords debate on Ukraine last Friday. “The axis of evil fighting [is] democracy and freedom on multiple fronts”, he warned.
“Iran, North Korea and China… want the West to look weak and be weak”, Baroness Fall concurred, while Lord Risby highlighted that the “dual-use equipment supplied by Iran” is “in large part” enabling the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. “There is a so-called axis of evil”, agreed the Rt. Hon. Lord Robathan, as “Iran and North Korea are already helping Russia in its fight”.
