A year ago today, I was preparing, as First Minister, to speak to the Scottish press to condemn the atrocious attacks carried out by Hamas the day before. In doing so, I knew that I could well be putting the lives of my in-laws, who were trapped in Gaza, at risk.
There is not a reasonable person in the world that looked on at the images of the attacks on October 7, 2023 and could feel anything other than horror and revulsion.
However, the retaliation from the government of Israel has gone far beyond a legitimate response, it is revenge. That revenge has resulted in the collective punishment of millions of innocent people, who have been killed, injured, forced to flee their homes and starved to death.
The killing of innocent men, women and children has been live-streamed into our living rooms, and on our mobile phones.
A year on, and it is innocent people, who have nothing to do with Hamas or Hezbollah, who are paying the biggest price. Oxfam reports that in the last year, more women and children have been killed in Gaza, by Israeli forces, than the equivalent period in any other conflict in the world, in the last twenty years.
Over 15,000 children are estimated to have been killed. Save the Children estimate 710 newborn babies have been killed by Israeli forces.
What crime did these tens of thousands of women, children and new-born babies commit? The worry is not just the inhumanity of such heinous killings, but for those, like me, who want to see a safe and secure Israel, alongside an independent Palestinian State, such brutality only perpetuates the cycles of violence we have witnessed in the region for decades. It simply does not make Israel safer.
Take the horrific case of Mohammed Abu Al Qumsan who went to register the birth of his four-day old twins, and returned home to find them, and his wife, killed by an Israeli airstrike.
I am a father of three girls, the youngest only 12 weeks old. If I returned home and my whole family had been wiped out, I would have nothing else to live for other than revenge.
By slaughtering so many innocent people, the Netanyahu government is not making the people of Israel safer but making Israel and the entire region more unstable. Of course, Israel, like any country, must have a right to defend itself. They have shown they are capable of very targeted military strikes when it suits them.
However, every country, Israel included, must abide by international law. Indiscriminate attacks, the killing of civilians, bombing hospitals, refugee camps, UN facilities, killing humanitarian aid workers, are all contraventions of international human rights law.
If countries can ignore international law, with impunity, then it is not worth the paper it is written on, and the entire rules-based order that is meant to keep us all safe, collapses.
The last year has represented a complete, abject failure by the international community to stop the violence and enforce a ceasefire. Worse, some governments, including the UK, continue to sell arms to a country whose Prime Minister is facing the possibility of an ICC arrest warrant for war crimes.
The international community must get tougher on their allies, demand a ceasefire, stop selling arms to Israel, recognise the Palestinian state, and enforce international law.
Violence is never the solution the only answer is a political and diplomatic resolution. Our collective failure to find one leaves the entire region, possibly the world, on the very brink of war.
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