Debate contribution: Gaza: Immediate Ceasefire

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 7 May 2024.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

7 May 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Gaza: Immediate Ceasefire

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4488340

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

In every generation, there come international events of such horror and such moral import that to remain silent is impossible. The burning moral question of this age — this moment — is the plight of the people of Palestine, particularly the nearly two million people in Gaza who have suffered months of bombardment, the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people and the virtual obliteration of large parts of civilian life, including hospitals, schools and the most basic infrastructure. The bombardment began as a response to the actions of Hamas. On 7 October, Hamas launched a series of coordinated atrocities in Israel, claiming the lives of more than 1,000 people, and took hundreds of hostages, including children and the elderly. That act was an outrage that no moral person could support and that no true supporter of the Palestinian cause could think was in the long-term best interests of the Palestinian people. It is vital to state clearly, as our motion does, that there is no contradiction between opposing and condemning the acts of Hamas on 7 October and opposing the shocking, grotesque response of Israel. To say that Israel's response has been disproportionate would be a grotesque, shameful understatement. The response has been limitless, unrestrained and repeatedly and brazenly in violation not only of international law but of the most basic moral imperatives that we should all live by, including the imperative to protect innocent civilian life. The destruction of hospitals and schools demonstrates contempt for human life. That has been made worse by the distortions and dissembling of Israeli Government spokespeople, up to and including the appalling Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. I will not list all the distortions, lies and obscenities that have been spoken by Israeli Government spokespeople over the past number of months, because those have, at times, been truly shocking, and I would use up all my time were I to do so. Those spokespeople have sought to shift the blame for innocent civilian deaths and to tell what amount to lies. As we know, powerful Western allies have not just armed Israel but have too often — as they have over the past 60-plus years — sought to protect Israel from the consequences of its actions, including through the use of repeated vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions. Such actions do not just threaten the prospects for peace in the Middle East; they undermine the ability of Western democracies, which claim to support and uphold human rights, to have meaningful credibility when they talk about human rights. They undermine their ability to robustly challenge truly heinous actors, such as Vladimir Putin, by tolerating the depths of inhumanity that Israel has inflicted in Gaza. Our motion is clear in both moral and political terms. Some people will ask why we have specifically used the word "genocide" in the text of our motion. In March, the UN special rapporteur said that she found:

"that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of [the crime of] genocide is met".

In January, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said that there was a "plausible" case that Israel should take action to prevent a genocide. While it is correct to say that the court has not yet made a specific finding of genocide in a legal case, I ask Assembly Members to reflect on whether anyone could honestly and sincerely argue that they believe, in the four months since that ICC judgement was rendered, that Israel has made any serious attempts to prevent a genocide. The definition of a "genocide" is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that nation or group. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed since October, and, as we speak, 1·5 million are sheltering in the border city of Rafah. To put those numbers into context, that is nearly the population of Northern Ireland — the region that we represent — sheltering, beleaguered and hungry, in one city. They are hungry, beleaguered and, in many cases, injured or suffering. They are injured from the conflict — from munitions that are manufactured in Western countries — or suffering from diseases that have not been treated properly because of the Israeli bombardment and destruction of medical facilities. We do not know exactly when or whether Israel will begin a full-scale invasion of Rafah, but we know that, if it does, the consequences will be grave. That would inevitably and unavoidably lead to the further large-scale killing of one particular national group: the Palestinians. It will be, as it has been repeatedly over the past months, a collective punishment. Collective punishment is specifically outlawed in international law, but that is what is being meted out to the Palestinian people. The wrongs that were committed by Hamas on 7 October — they were profoundly wrong — in no way justify, legally or morally, what has been visited on the people of Palestine since. That is why our motion uses the phrase "ongoing genocide". It is important not to make trivial comparisons between our experience here and conflicts elsewhere. I wanted to make that point. I hope that the debate will be mature, albeit grave. I am sure that strong opinions will be expressed, but I hope that we can do that in a mature way. It is important not to draw trivial comparisons between Northern Ireland and other parts of the world. That is true of what is happening in the Middle East; it is important not to draw facile comparisons. In the past seven months, as I said, 35,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel. That is 10 times the number killed in 30 years during our conflict. Indeed, on 7 October, 1,200 or 1,300 people were killed; that is more than a third of the total number killed in our Troubles. None of us can imagine the scale of the suffering being experienced in Gaza, but we in the Chamber know that, at some point, however deep the feelings of injustice are and however real the historical sense is of a wrong that needs to be righted, violence and vengeance need to be replaced by politics and, yes, by peace. Even if the current ceasefire proposals are accepted by Netanyahu's ultra-nationalist Government — we must all hope that they are and that international pressure is brought so to bear very quickly in the days to come — the people of Palestine and, indeed, those in Israel affected by the events of 7 October will live with decades of pain and trauma caused by the conflict. Young children suffering now with lost limbs and lost parents will carry their pain until the end of this century and beyond, long after all of us are gone. Nothing that can be said or done now, in the Chamber or anywhere else, can undo the trauma of those children or the loss experienced by ordinary Palestinians or, as I said, the Israelis who lost family members on 7 October. The other day, a representative of UNICEF, after his journey through Gaza, said of what he saw:

"The depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it".

Nothing we say now can undo the horror that has happened in the past seven or eight months, but there can be an immediate ceasefire. Politics and peace can replace violence and vengeance. Given our experience and what we have learned in a different context, we should all be willing to stand over the motion, express our solidarity with those who have experienced unimaginable pain, trauma and loss in the past number of months and say that now is the time, finally, to move beyond violence and vengeance and towards peace. I commend the motion to the Assembly.

1,308 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:22 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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