Votes on Gaza ceasefire – Northern Isles MP responds
Responding to the debate and votes on the conflict in Gaza and Israel this evening in Parliament, in which Conservative and SNP MPs walked out before voting occurred, allowing a Labour motion to pass unopposed, Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael said:
“I was glad to support a motion today which backed an immediate ceasefire, as I did in November. Parliament has not covered itself in glory today. We witnessed an hour of shouting and counterclaims which seemed far more about bruised egos than anything else. The back-and-forth drama and game-playing has been a distraction from the people at the heart of this issue.
“Somehow our politics seems to have lost sight of the basics here. Nothing is going to get better for the besieged people of Gaza until the killing stops. They deserve better than the political manoeuvring we have seen. There was an opportunity for MPs to come together and it is unfortunate that this has not happened.
“The last time we debated an SNP motion on Gaza, my party reached out to them and asked if they would be prepared to include a reference in it to the need for a political process and a two-state solution. The answer came back: no, this is our motion and you can support it or oppose it as you wish. As an exercise in consensus-building it left a lot to be desired.
“Twenty-one years ago the Labour MP, Graham Allan, managed to construct an amendment supported by people in all parties to say that the case for going to war in Iraq had not been proven. Ultimately it did not succeed and war came anyway, but still it felt like Parliament had done what it was meant to do, in finding a way across parties to focus on those points on which we agreed rather on party lines that divided us.
“My earnest prayer now is that we can put aside these petty political divisions and to stop trying to gain party advantage from a conflict that brings nothing but death and despair. The people that I met in Gaza all these years ago, and those who are still there today cowering in basements or shivering in tents, deserve that at the very least.”