KHAN AL-AHMAR

4th July 2018

Sir Nicholas Soames's question to Foreign Office Minister on demolition of Khan al-Ahmar and the Israeli Government.

Sir Nicholas Soames’s Question to the Foreign Office Minister, Alistair Burt MP,
on the floor of the House of Commons on the subject of the
Demolition of Khan al-Ahmar and the Israeli Government

 

I believe in a secure Israel alongside a viable and independent Palestine. However, it is beyond comprehension that a remarkable country like Israel, cultured, sophisticated and democratic—whose people down the centuries have themselves known such terrible suffering—can countenance such wicked behaviour, which is contrary to all international laws and humanitarian conventions, as she continues to bulldoze Palestinian villages like Khan al-Ahmar, whose residents’ houses are, I understand, at this moment being flattened. What other country would dare to behave in this barbaric way? Will the Government condemn these actions in the strongest possible terms?

The short answer to the last part of my right hon. Friend’s question is yes. The wider issue that he raised—and he put this extremely well in the Westminster Hall debate last week—was the contrast between an Israel for which many of us feel very deeply, and which we believe has many admirable qualities, and some of its actions which seem to go against that history and culture, and about which we have a sense of deep concern and sometimes bemusement. I know that it will have its reasons to defend its actions, and it is for the Israeli Government to do that, but the rest of us are disappointed and very perplexed today.

Hansard
Wednesday 4th July, 2018
Volume 644
No 165. Column 324-325

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