Reacting to reported Israeli strikes on Qatar, Dr Ellie Chowns, MP for North Herefordshire and Parliamentary Green Party Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, said:

“Targeting negotiators in Doha is reprehensible and strikes at the very mechanisms that offer a chance of ending this horror.

“Carrying out attacks on those engaged in talks – while the wider population of Gaza are starved and bombed – is self-evidently not the behaviour of a state seeking peace. It is the behaviour of a rogue state, operating completely outside international norms, which appears determined to pursue violence and undermine any possibility of a negotiated peace. 

“The UK government must unequivocally condemn these strikes and urgently suspend all military cooperation with, and arms sales to, Israel.

“We are witnessing a pattern of total impunity where Israeli military objectives are pursued with devastating civilian cost. That cannot stand. The UK must press tirelessly for immediate de-escalation and a ceasefire, for safe and unfettered delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and for independent investigations to hold perpetrators of war crimes and genocide to account.”

Green Party leader Zack Polanski has called for the arrest of Israeli President Herzog when he visits the UK this week, accusing him of being part of the “Israeli government engaged in an ongoing genocide.”

Polanski said:

“President Herzog has been complicit while the Israeli government has engaged in an ongoing genocide in Gaza. Everyone involved should be arrested, charged for war crimes and face justice.”

“Welcoming a potential war criminal to the UK is another demonstration of how this Labour government is implicated in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It also serves as a brutal insult to those mourning the thousands of innocent lives lost and to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing ongoing violence and hunger.

“A refusal to detain Herzog can be seen as a contravention of the Geneva Convention which makes clear that States have legal responsibility for preventing the targeting of civilians. When this is breached individuals must be prosecuted and this should be applied to Herzog.”

Co-deputy leader, Mothin Ali, added:

“The planned visit of President Herzog coincides with the DSEI arms fair in London where 51 Israeli arms companies are putting on a sickening display of “battle-tested” armaments that will potentially have been used in war crimes against Palestinians. But instead of kicking Israel out of DSEI, the government seems happy for one of the world’s largest arms fairs to host these companies making and selling weapons of death and destruction. Another sign of complicity from this Labour government.”

“This government thinks it can fool the public by banning selected Israeli representatives. We see through it, and we will continue to call it out, until all those complicit in genocide are brought to justice.”