In today’s topical questions to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Conservative MP Lucy Allan drew attention to the latest terror attacks against Israelis.
The Member of Parliament for Telford said: “There has been another weekend of deadly terror attacks on Israeli citizens, including a brutal stabbing yesterday. Will the Foreign Secretary condemn those attacks, and does he agree that sanctioned incitement to commit terror must end?”
Minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood MP expressed the need to resume peace talks and agreed that the attacks should be condemned.
He said: “My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I articulated in a previous answer, we need to get all parties back to the table. Unfortunately, it seems that the planets are misaligned at the moment. We need to reconfigure and ensure that all parties are able to come back and prevent the scale of violence from increasing”.
He referred to the previous answer given to Louise Ellman, the Labour MP for Liverpool, Riverside, in which he emphasised the need to “de-escalate tensions and get all parties back to the table”.
During FCO oral Parliamentary questions, Mrs Ellman asked: “Will the Minister raise in his discussions the current terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians? Some 108 Israelis have been killed or injured by shootings and stabbings on the streets in recent weeks”.
She added: “Will he also condemn the incitement that goes with that, including the statement from the Palestinian cleric in Gaza who said that Jews should be turned into body parts to stab “the myths of the Talmud” out of their heads?”
Mr Ellwood replied: “The hon. Lady raises a very serious point. Thankfully, in the past couple of weeks there has been a reduction in violence in the West Bank. Since the start of the current spate of violence, we have spoken regularly with both sides—the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority—and we urgently need to de-escalate tensions and get all parties back to the table”.
