Petition: Stop splitting hairs. Just vote for ceasefire.
The war in Gaza has claimed the lives of nearly 30,000 Palestinians and over 1,500 Israelis, and a new escalation appears imminent.
And yet, in this pivotal, urgent moment, UK politicians are using this for domestic political football. Consider the embarrassing acrobatics of the past few months. Tortuous squabbles over “cessation of hostilities” versus “ceasefire” versus “humanitarian pause” versus any other way of saying “stop shooting” - even as the conflict escalates.
I'm writing to you as my Member of Parliament to ask you to support a motion, any motion, calling for a ceasefire in the conflict right now.
The situation is on the verge of spiralling further still. According to the Times of Israel, the Israeli government is preparing to assail the very place to which it had urged Palestinians to evacuate - Rafah. And just across the border, the Guardian reports that Egyptian contractors appear to be building a gigantic refugee camp in preparation for the unspeakable: a mass expulsion of people from their homeland on a scale not seen in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948. The implications for the region, and for the very notion of any red lines for any government anywhere in the world, are almost too terrifying to contemplate.
Imagine what a powerful signal it would send if all parties, the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, DUP, Alliance, SDLP and independents of all stripes renounced the use of this conflict as a political football and supported a motion for a ceasefire and for the complete release of the Israeli hostages. Imagine if they ignored the fact it was moved by a rival party. Imagine if they stopped caring if the SNP, too, was motivated by domestic politics and its own electioneering. Imagine if they ignored whether a particular amendment got through. Imagine if they discarded point-scoring over semantics - humanitarian ceasefire, permanent ceasefire, sustainable ceasefire - and simply said: enough.
Imagine what a signal it would send to the world if our politicians said - this is too urgent for domestic rivalries. We are going to overturn the very way we do politics - for this.
Imagine what it would mean at home and abroad if one of the P5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council united around a simple message: Ceasefire now.
We call on the leaders of all parties and on every MP in the House to set aside partisan factionalism and for a motion calling for the ceasefire, whether their own party amendments are accepted or not.
The war in Gaza has claimed the lives of nearly 30,000 Palestinians and over 1,500 Israelis, and a new escalation appears imminent.
And yet, in this pivotal, urgent moment, UK politicians are using this for domestic political football. Consider the embarrassing acrobatics of the past few months. Tortuous squabbles over “cessation of hostilities” versus “ceasefire” versus “humanitarian pause” versus any other way of saying “stop shooting” - even as the conflict escalates.
I'm writing to you as my Member of Parliament to ask you to support a motion, any motion, calling for a ceasefire in the conflict right now.
The situation is on the verge of spiralling further still. According to the Times of Israel, the Israeli government is preparing to assail the very place to which it had urged Palestinians to evacuate - Rafah. And just across the border, the Guardian reports that Egyptian contractors appear to be building a gigantic refugee camp in preparation for the unspeakable: a mass expulsion of people from their homeland on a scale not seen in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948. The implications for the region, and for the very notion of any red lines for any government anywhere in the world, are almost too terrifying to contemplate.
Imagine what a powerful signal it would send if all parties, the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, DUP, Alliance, SDLP and independents of all stripes renounced the use of this conflict as a political football and supported a motion for a ceasefire and for the complete release of the Israeli hostages. Imagine if they ignored the fact it was moved by a rival party. Imagine if they stopped caring if the SNP, too, was motivated by domestic politics and its own electioneering. Imagine if they ignored whether a particular amendment got through. Imagine if they discarded point-scoring over semantics - humanitarian ceasefire, permanent ceasefire, sustainable ceasefire - and simply said: enough.
Imagine what a signal it would send to the world if our politicians said - this is too urgent for domestic rivalries. We are going to overturn the very way we do politics - for this.
Imagine what it would mean at home and abroad if one of the P5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council united around a simple message: Ceasefire now.
We call on the leaders of all parties and on every MP in the House to set aside partisan factionalism and for a motion calling for the ceasefire, whether their own party amendments are accepted or not.
