UK's Starmer tells parliament Israel not committing genocide in Gaza

Keir Starmer says he’s aware of the term genocide and that’s why he never used that term to describe Israeli actions

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has told the parliament on Wednesday that Israel is not committing a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

During the Prime Minister’s Questions at the House of Commons, Independent lawmaker Ayoub Khan raised comments from Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who recently claimed that the term genocide referred to “when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War in the Holocaust” and that using it to describe Gaza “now undermines [its] seriousness”.

Khan then said Lammy’s words are not acceptable.

“Article two of the United Nations Genocide Convention makes it explicitly clear that genocide is not about numbers, it's about intent. The intent of the Israeli government and the IDF has been explicitly clear in words and in actions over the past 400 days, more than 45,000 innocent men, women and children killed.”

The lawmaker said the foreign minister explicitly denied that a genocide was even taking place and “suggested that the Israeli army had not yet killed enough Palestinians” to constitute a genocide.

“Will the Prime Minister share his definition of genocide with this House?” he asked.

In his response, Starmer said: “It would be wise to start a question like that by reference to what happened in October of last year. I'm well aware of the definition of genocide, and that is why I've never described this as and referred to it as genocide.”

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories who is currently on a UK visit, has repeatedly affirmed her belief that what is happening qualifies as genocide.