Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Access Debate
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Steve Yemm
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Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Access
Steve Yemm Excerpts(1 day, 15 hours ago)
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Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. The famine that we see unfolding in Gaza is not merely a humanitarian crisis, but an absolute moral catastrophe: children starving before our eyes and families digging through rubble not for shelter but for food.
I welcome the fact that the Government have already taken decisive action to respond to this by restoring funding to UNRWA, through a programme to airlift critically injured children, and by supporting UK-Med and treating more than 600,000 Gazans. We have helped to shape the international community’s work to plan for what post-conflict peace will look like. We have provided more than £250 million in development assistance and have been working with our allies, including Egypt and Jordan.
Those are all welcome steps, but all of us here today want to hear from the Minister about what more we will do. We must get more humanitarian aid into Gaza, without obstruction, without delay and on a scale that meets this vast and desperate need. Food, water, medicine and shelter are not political bargaining chips; they are basic human rights.