I thank Brendan O’Hara for securing this important debate. Like many Members, I have received many emails from my constituents, and I speak today to give a voice to their concerns.

It is difficult to put into context the sheer scale of death and destruction that we have seen in Gaza over the last two years. We all know the figures: one in every 33 people has died since the start of the assault, and over 90% of homes have been damaged. As Shockat Adam highlighted, behind the statistics are real human stories. We have heard from doctors in Gaza who have been operating without anaesthetic and performing emergency C-sections on women without painkillers, and there has been a rapid increase in child mortality. We have heard of children who have been shot by snipers not once, but twice. It is sometimes easy for us to become desensitised to what we are seeing, but we must not stop calling it out.

The world-respected peace charity Doctors Without Borders has been banned from operating in Gaza and the occupied west bank following its refusal to hand over a list of its staff. What does it mean if lifesaving organisations that carry out work in war zones are being banned? The UK must be very clear about this. As a signatory to the genocide convention, we have a legal obligation to call out and prevent genocide, as do the other 153 states that ratified the treaty. For the treaty to be effective, and for us to stop not just this but future genocides, we must speak with one voice. We must listen when the United Nations tells us that

“Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”