Iqbal Mohamed MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Sept 2026 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  May I join many hon. Members across the House in thanking the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister for the statement and this vital change in Government policy? However, many will ask why this action has taken so long, since the ICJ advisory opinion was issued in July 2024 and ethnic cleansing and genocide have continued both in the west bank and Gaza. Will the Foreign Secretary explain why it has taken the Labour Government so long to act? Will they now fully comply with their obligations under the ICJ advisory opinion? Will they conduct a review of British policy of non-compliance with international law in Israel?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Falkland Islands: Sovereignty · Hansard source

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  It is clear to the British public that the special relationship between the UK and the US is more special for the UK than it is for the US under Trump. With the US extending threats, bullying and tariff threats, it is akin to an abusive relationship. Will the Minister unequivocally confirm that Britain will not tolerate intimidation and blackmail by the US, Israel or others, and that British sovereignty matters more than our relationship with hostile states that are committing blatant, horrific violations of international law?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban · Hansard source

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  I thank my Yorkshire colleague the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this debate, and for introducing it with the passion and power she did. Every single pound that goes from Britain to Israel is in one way or another helping Israel perpetuate its illegal occupation and apartheid system against the Palestinian people. Just this week, Haaretz reported that Israeli nationalist crime in the west bank is up by 560% since 2019, according to official police data. We know that the vast majority of the crimes by these terrorist settlers go unreported and unpunished, so if the percentage increase is officially 500-plus, it will actually be in the thousands given the crimes that will have gone unreported. These settlements are illegal colonies. For years, Ministers have stood at the Dispatch Box and rightly described these “settlements” as illegal under international law—this Government have done so more times than I can count—yet the condemnation rings hollow. If settlements are illegal, why are we still treating their products as legitimate? Every shipment from a settlement carries a human cost in the displacement, deprivation of income and death that it constitutes. It is the economic bedrock of a system of apartheid. Up to 110,000 Palestinian families rely on the olive harvest as their source of income. For generations, olive trees have sustained communities economically and culturally. There has been settler violence for many decades, but during last year’s harvest it reached unprecedented levels, all against the backdrop of a genocide in Gaza. A Palestinian farmer named Jamal Daraghmeh was beaten alongside his sons as Israeli settlers tried to harvest olives from the land his family had cultivated for generations. That is how settlements expand: families are terrorised, livelihoods are destroyed and communities are driven from their land, creating the single greatest obstacle to Palestinian economic development and self-determination. These injustices are accelerating before our eyes. As we have heard, since the genocide in Gaza began, settlement expansion has surged, with 165 new settlement outposts established. That is an average of 47 every year, up from just over five between 1996 and 2022. The consequences are also measured in the number of lives taken. According to B’Tselem, Israeli forces or civilians have killed 4,000 Palestinians since 2000. In the past year and a half, 70 Palestinian children have been murdered in the west bank, at an average of almost one every week. Just last week, Smotrich celebrated what he called the “revolution” in settlement expansion. That a sanctioned Minister is publicly boasting about accelerating annexation while settlements continue to grow unabated shows that this Government’s approach is having zero meaningful impact.

• 9 Jul 2026 · Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. As a barrister, he knows, as do many across the House who are not in that profession, that it is incumbent—an obligation—on the UK Government to take any and all practical steps to prevent and stop a genocide happening anywhere to any people, and that includes the Palestinians. To conclude, history will not remember how many times this Government have condemned illegal settlements. It will remember that Britain, for decades, has chosen to keep trading with Israel and the settlements anyway. Condemnation without consequence is nothing less than complicity. Israeli settlers, aided and abetted by the IDF and the Israeli Government, have taken away the rights of the Palestinians to live. Instead of sanctioning the settlers, successive British Governments have actively facilitated and allowed goods and services from the settlements to be sold in the UK. Why do the British Government despise Palestinian life so much?