Michael McDowell (Independent)

I want to raise with the Leader of the House the possibility of having, before the House rises for the summer vacation, the opportunity to collectively consider a resolution on the situation in Gaza. Today, it is reported that Israel Katz, the defence minister for Israel, has announced a plan that the IDF is working on to remove all of the 2 million people from Gaza to a compound which it proposes to create in the ruins of Rafah. It will call it a humanitarian city, from which nobody will be allowed to exit except to go to an Arab country. That is a war crime and it is scandalous.

It is not an isolated Gaza situation. On the West Bank, some 40,000 people have been expelled from places like Tulkarm and Jenin, long established urban refugee camps. Some 6,000 people have had their houses demolished by explosions in reprisals. That is a technique the British started in Ireland during the War of Independence, and their forces brought it to Palestine as a reprisal measure. It survived into the Israeli period of armed confrontation.

Today I note The Guardian newspaper has stated that 32 sq. km on the fringes of the occupied territories, which are Palestinian lands with, I understand, about 12 villages on them, are to be cleared to make way for an Israeli firing range. When do we get together in this House to say this must stop? Surely this House, the Whips and group leaders can get together. It does not require a huge debate to put on the record our absolute revulsion at what is going on and what is now planned, and to make it clear to the American ambassador, in particular, that the complicity of Donald Trump in this plan to create a new Riviera on the Gaza Strip is utterly unacceptable to this House and most Irish people who are decent.

We can do it. It will only take five minutes because I do not believe there will be any opposition to it in this House before we rise. It is shocking to me that right across Europe there is a deafening silence at this further war crime, which is redolent of things that happened 70 and 80 years ago in central Europe, and Israelis should be aware that this is happening again in our time.