Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside, Labour)
No, I have no time.
That is why, on 14 January, Israel made a complaint to the United Nations Security Council about Hamas using children as human shields. There is a Hamas war room under the Shifa hospital—an absolute disgrace. On 9 January, the Israeli defence forces found a map of al-Atatra, a neighbourhood of Gaza, which was used by Hamas to record the location of explosive devices. That map showed that houses in that area were booby-trapped to put civilians in the line of fire, knowing that that would cause the maximum number of civilian deaths. That is callous, outrageous and deplorable. I am surprised as well as outraged that the same people who express genuine concern about the loss of civilian life—I share those concerns—do not also condemn Hamas for its callous use of civilians as a human shield. Let us remember that the organisers and leaders of Hamas not only extol the virtues of martyrdom and jihad but proclaim, "We love death. You love life." That is what Hamas is all about.
When we rightly show our concern about the number of civilians who are injured and who die, we should remember the complaints made by Egypt, on 28 December, that Hamas has been preventing the injured from going across the border into Egypt for treatment. That is the nature of Hamas. When people jump so readily to condemn Israel for protecting its civilians, after claiming that it has a right to do so, they should not ignore the nature and deeds of Hamas, which sets out deliberately to kill as many civilians as possible.
What is the way forward? It is through the enactment of resolution 1860 by both Hamas and Israel. That can only be done through steps being taken so that rockets stop being fired on Israeli citizens on a permanent basis. Hamas has no right to fire rockets and missiles on Israeli civilians. The Israeli settlers and soldiers have left Gaza: 8,500 settlers left, many of them removed by force, yet Hamas—
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