A Chilcot-style inquiry would uncover the “murky history of what’s gone on” in Gaza, Jeremy Corbyn has said.
Parliament moved a step closer to setting up a probe after MPs agreed that the Gaza (Independent Public Inquiry) Bill should be listed for a debate later this year.
The draft new law would “require the inquiry to consider any UK military, economic or political co-operation with Israel since October 2023”, the month when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 others.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has seen more than 54,000 people in Gaza killed, according to the territory’s health ministry.
“Our future history books will report with shame those that had the opportunity to stop this carnage but failed to act to achieve it, and so we will continue our campaigns in this House and outside because we’re appalled at what is happening,” the former Labour Party leader told the Commons.
Mr Corbyn, the Independent MP for Islington North, had earlier said: “In the aftermath of the Iraq war, several attempts were made to establish an inquiry surrounding the conduct of the British military operations.
“The government of the day spent many years resisting those attempts and those demands for an inquiry, however, they could not prevent the inevitable and in 2016 we had the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry, which Sir John Chilcot had undertaken over several years.”
Mr Corbyn added that when he was the Labour leader, when the 12-volume report came out, he “apologised on behalf of the Labour Party for the catastrophic decision to go to war in Iraq” and added: “History is now repeating itself.”
He warned that “human beings have endured a level of horror and inhumanity that should haunt us all forever – entire families wiped out, limbs strewn across the street, mothers screaming for their children buried under the rubble, human beings torn to pieces, doctors performing amputations without anaesthetic, children picking grass and dirt from the ground thinking they might find something edible to eat”.
Mr Corbyn alleged that the UK had a “highly influential role in Israel’s military operations”, including by supplying weapons, and also said a future inquiry should seek the “truth regarding the role of British military bases in Cyprus” and Government “legal advice over an assessment of genocide”.
He said the inquiry would uncover the “murky history of what’s gone on, the murky arms sales and the complicity in appalling acts of genocide”.
Deputy Speaker Nus Ghani called “order” when several MPs applauded, as Mr Corbyn presented his Bill.
The Bill will be listed for its next debate on July 4.
