MP visits Gaza
Andy Slaughter holds debate at Westminster over aid to Gaza
Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush MP Andy Slaughter debated the continuing need of Aid for Gaza in Westminster on Wednesday after spending last week touring the war-torn region and meeting Palestians to hear their story.
During the trip, the MP visited hospitals, a music school, a kindergarten and entire villages which had been damaged or totally destroyed by the recent incursion, and spoke with Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, Salam Fayyad.
Mr Slaughter kept a diary during the week he was there, detailing how he met Gaza campaigner Jocelyn Hurndall, whose son Tom was deliberately shot by an Israeli sniper while protecting children in Gaza in 2003, as well as human rights organisations, small businesses and Palestinian charities.
After visiting villages and homes that had been flattened he wrote: "An incredibly hectic and harrowing day: we began with a visit to a kindergarten partly collapsed when the police station next door was bombed.
"But while this might be seen as “collateral damage”, what we saw next utterly horrified us – whole villages such as Beit Haynoum and Abn Rabo, which had been flattened first by F16s then bulldozed with dynamite.
"We visited the Al-Qudz hospital, a major which was bombed it seems with white phosphorous shells and had to be evacuated (including the intensive care unit).
"The main business district in Gaza has been annihilated: over 650 major businesses over the Gaza strip have been destroyed by the Israeli action. Finally, we visited the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), whose own warehouses of food and medicine were bombed by the Israelis."
Mr Slaughter also saw evidence of Palestinian families being evicted from homes they had been 'temporarily housed' in by the UN since 1956 by Israeli forces He said: "While we were there, an elderly woman who is living in a tent as near as possible to her former home received a telephone call from the Israeli police to let her know that they were coming to demolish her tent – for the fifth time."
Mr Slaughter has previously criticised the BBC for not publicising the Gaza appeal.
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