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Hussam, 13, and Muhammad, 14, were killed by air-dropped cluster bombs. These bombs were made by the United States and were dropped in a military campaign supported by the British government. Hussam and Muhammad were born in Baghdad and died in 2003. “The bomblet ripped off their legs and ultimately killed them,” according to Human Rights Watch. They were two of about 200,000 civilians who were killed in the Iraq war.
For years after that conflict, the government tried to resist several attempts to establish an inquiry into the policymaking of British officials. However, it could not prevent the inevitable – and in 2016 we had the publication of the Chilcot inquiry. I was the leader of the Labour party when the report was published, and it found grave failings within the British government. After I had responded to the Chilcot inquiry in parliament that day, I then went over the road to Church House, where we had invited war veterans, Iraqis and the families of British soldiers who had lost their lives. I apologised on behalf of the party for its catastrophic decision to go to war in Iraq. Today, history is repeating itself – and a Labour government is making another grave mistake.
After 20 months of Israeli bombardment, the death toll in Gaza has exceeded 54,000. As for the survivors, the injured and the bereaved – they will face lifelong scars for generations to come.
Israel has not been acting alone. It has relied on military, economic and political support from governments around the world. Britain may have had a change in government since 7 October 2023, but one thing has remained constant: the steady supply of arms to Israel. Last year, between October and December alone, Labour approved more arms exports licences to Israel than the Conservatives approved between 2020 and 2023. This was in spite of the government’s announcement of a part suspension in September 2024.
Many of us have continued to express our disgust over the continued supply of components to the F-35 jet fighter programme. I remain astounded that the government openly admits it is making an “exception” to its part suspension. Is this an exception to its legal obligations to prevent genocide? One thing is beyond doubt: this government is still allowing the supply of arms to a nation whose leader is wanted by the international criminal court for alleged crimes against humanity.
We have also repeatedly asked for the truth regarding the role of British military bases in Cyprus, concerning the transfer of arms to Israel and the supply of military intelligence. When Keir Starmer visited RAF Akrotiri in December 2024, he was filmed telling troops: “The whole world is relying on you, and everybody back at home is relying on you.” He added: “Quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about all of the time … We can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing here.” What does the government have to hide?
Our questions have been met with evasion, obstruction and silence, leaving the public in the dark over the ways in which the responsibilities of government have been discharged. Transparency and accountability are cornerstones of democracy. The British public deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity.
That is why I am tabling a private members’ bill tomorrow calling for a full, public, independent inquiry into the UK’s role in Israel’s military assault in Gaza. This inquiry would seek to establish the truth about Britain’s military, economic or political cooperation with Israel since October 2023. Any meaningful inquiry would require the full cooperation of government ministers – Conservative and Labour – who have been involved in the decision-making processes.
This inquiry must find out: what arms have been supplied to Israel? Which of these arms have been used to kill Palestinians? What legal advice has the government received? Is RAF Akrotiri being used as a route for weapons to be deployed in Gaza? What video footage does the government have of the war zone? What intelligence has been passed to Israel?
Over the past 20 months, human beings have endured a level of horror and inhumanity that should haunt us for ever. Entire families wiped out. Limbs strewn across the street. Mothers screaming for their children torn to pieces. Doctors performing amputations without anaesthesia. Home by home, hospital by hospital, generation by generation. We have not been witnessing a war. We have been witnessing a genocide, livestreamed before the entire world.
No one can pretend they did not know what was happening. In October 2023, we warned that we were witnessing the beginning of the total annihilation of Gaza and its people. We said Palestinians were being collectively punished for a terrible crime they did not commit. We pleaded with political leaders to call for peace.
We were ignored. Today, some politicians have finally started to backtrack, perhaps frightened by the consequences of their inhumanity. If they had any integrity, they would weep for the 54,000 Palestinians buried under the rubble by their moral and political cowardice. Today, schoolchildren are taught about history’s worst crimes against humanity. In the future, our history books will shame those who had the opportunity to stop this massacre but instead chose to enable one of the greatest crimes of our time.
This issue is not going away – and we are not going anywhere. The government must decide: will it support this inquiry, or will it block our efforts to establish the truth?
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Jeremy Corbyn is the MP for Islington North. He was leader of the Labour party from 2015 to 2020
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