Occupied Palestinian Territories: Genocide Risk Assessment

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber (Brendan O’Hara) for bringing forward this most important debate.

This is a debate on an obligation to assess the risk of genocide. Who could disagree with that? There has been a terrible war in Gaza, and although there is a ceasefire, loss of life continues. It was sparked by the 7 October attack in 2023 and the taking of the hostages, which was the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. This was not a war of Israel’s seeking. The aims of the war were to secure the release of the hostages and to prevent Hamas from ever repeating their attack, which they had promised to do on many occasions. As the Chief Rabbi said,

“If Hamas lays down its arms there will be no fighting… If Israel were to lay down its arms there would be no Israel.”

Genocide is a legal description of the intentional, systematic destruction in whole or in part of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as defined by the 1948 UN genocide convention. The concept was defined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer from Lviv/Lwów/Lemberg—much in the news—in the aftermath of the war. I first heard of Lemkin in the marvellous book “East West Street” by Philippe Sands, who will deliver tonight the Alf Dubs lecture in Battersea.

“Intent” is the crucial word. Britain and its allies are not accused of genocide for the strategic bombing of Germany, despite the hundreds of thousands who were killed. It is a matter for a court to decide on genocide, and despite the many debates about it in this Chamber, we can all agree that this is not a court.

We know that there has been massive loss of life and destruction in Gaza, but I simply cannot believe that it was the stated intention of the Government of Israel to completely destroy the population of Gaza. We do not have any means of independently verifying anything, since we are left to rely on news from the Hamas-led Health Ministry and the Israel Government’s spokespeople. I directly asked the President of Israel, Mr Herzog, twice about allowing in independent journalists, such as those from CNN or the BBC, and I was twice informed that it was too dangerous. Is that still the case? I doubt it now that there is a ceasefire.

The word “genocide” has been used to rally protest all over the world, but we have seen where some of that has led. If we allow this most significant of words to be bandied about with such certainty, do we not risk undermining the words that are needed to describe the Holocaust, which was the intentional and systematic murder of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis; the Rohingya being expelled en masse, raped and slaughtered; the Uyghurs being subjected to mass internment, forced sterilisation and cultural erasure; or the mass murders in Rwanda?

Genocide is a quite specific crime, and frankly it is not my belief that this was the intent of the Israel Defence Forces. But I do agree that there is an obligation for this to be assessed.