Sir Keir Starmer rejected controversial statements made at PMQs by a pro-Gaza MP this afternoon.
Shockat Adam, the independent MP for Leicester South, urged the prime minister to take a tougher approach to Israel, claiming: “The Israeli government approved a plan to officially conquer Gaza, and just yesterday, minister Smotrich vowed that Gaza will be entirely destroyed and that the Palestinians will have to leave in great numbers to third countries.”
Israel’s far-right finance minister had made the comments at a settlement conference in Ofra in the West Bank, organised by Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon.
Without making a distinction between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists, Adam told the Commons that Smotrich’s comments came “at the end of the extermination of over 50,000 Palestinian men, women and children and ... at the same time, simultaneous expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank”.
The Leicester South MP went on to urge the prime minister to “finally acknowledge ethnic cleansing is underway and end all UK military cooperation with Israel, especially the illegal provision of F-35 fighter jet parts”.
“Will he risk making Britain complicit in war crimes and be the prime minister to see Britain answer at The Hague for its role in this atrocity?”, Adam asked.
Starmer, though, responded by saying that “most of what he says is simply not right”.
However, he described the situation for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as “increasingly intolerable”, adding that he was “deeply concerned, particularly with the lack of aid that is getting in and the impact it's having hundreds of 1000s of individuals.”
“That concern is something I recently reaffirmed to the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, where I asserted again that a two-state solution is the only viable approach for peace, and our focus is on delivering peace for Palestinians and Israelis, returning to the ceasefire, getting their hostages out and humanitarian aid in that is desperately needed in greater number and more quickly”, Starmer added.
Shockat Adam was, along with Jeremy Corbyn and three other MPs, elected on an explicitly pro-Gaza independent platform at last year’s general election. He succeeded in unseating Jonathan Ashworth, a Labour frontbencher and key ally of Sir Keir Starmer.
In a speech immediately after he was announced the victor in Leicester South, he pulled out a keffiyeh and declared “this is for the people of Gaza”.
In September, the independents formalised as a parliamentary grouping called the “Independent Alliance”.
