Below is the text of the speech Kim Johnson MP was due to give at Labour & Palestine’s event on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which was unfortunately curtailed due to Parliamentary business.
Thanks chair, I am pleased to speak today on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people
I want to start by reiterating my condemnation for the atrocities carried out by Hamas on October 7th and the collective punishment that has been imposed on Gaza in the weeks since. The loss of civilian life is abhorrent, and in times such as these it’s vital that we remember our shared humanity and that we come together to address the root cause of this tragic cycle of violence: the occupation of Palestine.
This is a time of unspeakable tragedy for the Palestinian people and for humanity.
The harrowing images, videos and reports of the catastrophe being waged on Gaza are utterly heart breaking. The numbers of Palestinians displaced and dead now far outstrip those of the 1948 Nakba.
It is an outrage that the international community has turned its back on Gaza and permitted this to happen in plain sight. The complete disregard for Palestinian life in the defence of Western interests should chill us to the bone.
There is no justification for the collective punishment being imposed on Palestinians in the occupied territories.
This latest surge in violence, aerial bombardment of the most densely populated, open air prison on earth, has created a level of suffering that was previously unimaginable.
A tortuous ban on essentials entering the strip, including water, food, medical aid and fuel.
The siege of hospitals, where premature babies in intensive care units were starved of oxygen until they could no longer survive.
Pregnant women giving birth without pain relief or access to proper medical care, estimated 160 babies delivered every day.
Accusations of the use of white phosphorous.
International aid workers, medics, journalists all killed in the line of duty.
Over 5000 children murdered in the most distressing ways possible, entire families wiped out – and the western world watched this play out on our TV screens every night, and still refused to call for a ceasefire, excusing Israel for these atrocities, as a right to defend themselves.
No one can plead ignorance to these atrocities committed by Israel in the name of self-defence, not least our own political leaders who even now are refusing to call for a permanent ceasefire.
In the harrowing words of UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres, Gaza is a ‘graveyard for children.’
And let us not forget the West Bank, where Israeli forces and settlers have killed more Palestinians since 7 October than the whole of last year, the temporary truce in Gaza will not bring an end to this escalating violence and expansion.
As the fragile ‘pauses’ continue to hold, the international movement for a just peace must not fall into complacency. Just because the bombs have stopped falling and the humanitarian operation has begun does not mean the danger has passed. We are witnessing the biggest forced displacement of Palestinians since the Nakba, with indications that Israel intends to occupy northern Gaza and push the Palestinians into the Sinai.
Israel is the only country in the world that systematically detains, interrogates and prosecutes children as young as 12 in military courts and accepts confessions obtained by coercion. It’s just one part of a broad unequal legal frame that Israel applies across historic Palestine, particularly since the 2018 Nation State Law and Trump’s Deal of the Century.
Action must be taken to put an end to the decades long systematic violation of Palestinian rights, including the state-sanctioned settler expansions and violence, the military occupation of the West Bank, and the siege of Gaza that has turned the strip into the world’s largest open-air prison. Failure will prolong cycles of violent outbursts, caused by the underlying day-to-day violence and humiliation of the occupation.
Impunity breeds extremism. Governments in the West, including our own, have for years given Israel a blank cheque to flout international humanitarian law without repercussion. The last seven weeks has shown just what this leads to, we have to keep up the pressure on our own government to hold Israel to account for its actions. This includes the immediate suspension of arms sales to Israel, while investigations are undertaken to determine if the arms we sell Israel have been used in violation of international humanitarian law against civilians in the occupied territories – as I called for in my question to the Minister of Defence last week.
If one thing has brought light in these dark times, it is the hundreds of thousands of people in this country and beyond who have taken to the streets week after week to say not in our name, who joined millions around the world who have stood strong in the face of attempts to intimidate and de-mobilise these expressions of solidarity. The strength of public opinion has been impossible to ignore.
We must maintain this pressure to end the bloodshed, starting with a permanent ceasefire.
We must then fight to make this atrocity a decisive break with the decades of subjugation and occupation of the Palestinian people, and demand nothing less than a sustainable, just and lasting peace that includes the right of return for all refugees and an end to settler colonialism, the siege, and the occupation, until Palestine is free.
Labour & Palestine 