Following months of campaigning from local residents, on Wednesday evening (17th July) Milton Keynes council joined a growing number of city councils across the country and voted unanimously to pass a motion to support a ceasefire in Gaza.
Proposing the motion, Councillor Robin Bradburn said: “It is with a degree of sadness I move this motion. The events in Gaza have pulled all of our heart strings. We debated this issue back in October last year when the leader of the council tabled an emergency motion. We were in fact one of the first councils in the country to debate these issues. We now note that after nine months the situation in Gaza has escalated to a scale that a further direct motion is necessary. In October 2023 the situation was new and fast moving. It is clear we are now in a situation which really does cry out for an immediate ceasefire.”
He continued: “It cannot be right that a hospital or a school becomes a military target based on some intelligence that a terrorist group may be there or nearby, which then becomes a bomb site.”
The council originally debated an emergency motion back in October last year at the start of the assault, however it was not passed. A petition was presented to the council in January this year on behalf of the local community calling for a ceasefire, which again was rejected. In May, on Nakba Day, local campaigners were removed from the public gallery in the council chambers for speaking up and calling for a ceasefire.
Speaking on the motion this week, Cabinet Leader Councillor Pete Marland said: “I think over the past few months it has become increasingly clear that the government of Israel are not keeping to international law and they will have to answer in the international court, particularly the prime minister of Israel, for the actions that have taken place over the past few years.”
Huge numbers of people across the city from all faiths and backgrounds are devastated by the horror and destruction being wrought on innocent Palestinians, and have been campaigning tirelessly to encourage Milton Keynes councillors and MPs to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to stop further loss of civilian life.
Speaking as a member of the public at the council meeting, local resident David Duff said: “We have people in Milton Keynes whose families are directly affected on both sides of what is going on who are very close to being traumatised by the real time atrocities. We are seeing war crimes, crimes against humanity; people are being killed by weapons that our country helps to supply. Human Rights Watch and many other human rights organisations, including B’Tselem are saying, and I quote: “We declare Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza is a form of genocidal violence and ethnic cleansing and has resulted in famine and malnutrition across all of Gaza.”
With the latest death toll estimate published in the journal Lancet being more than 186,000 people and rising, local activists who attended the council meeting believe that the council needs to do more. Activist and resident Fatima Shamsi said: “The council vote to pass a ceasefire motion today feels like a hollow victory. We have been campaigning tirelessly for months for our elected representatives in Milton Keynes to stand up for what’s right and have been shunned and derided. In that time the lives of thousands of men, women, elders and children have been destroyed. Every second counts. The council must to more to show that we are a city that does not support genocide.
“Our newly elected MP for Milton Keynes Central Emily Darlington was in the chamber on Wednesday and gave an impassioned speech about the 'intolerable death and destruction in Gaza’. We hope that she will stand in integrity and do all that she can in Parliament to put pressure on her peers push for an immediate ceasefire, the end of arms sales to Israel, the urgent opening of humanitarian corridors for aid and adequate provision of food, fuel, medicine and other humanitarian assistance, as well as the restoration of water and electricity to Gaza."
Comments