Labour Gaza ceasefire vote: Starmer braces for resignations as MPs urged not to back motion

The votes on the competing Labour and SNP motions will come after a debate on the King’s Speech ends after 7pm.

Nearly 70 Labour MPs have defied their Sir Keir Starmer to call for a ceasefire now, including 19 members of the frontbench.

Shadow minister and frontbencher Imran Hussain was the first to quit his position last week, in order to advocate for an immediate ceasefire.

The attack on al-Shifa hospital has shown the apparent limits of the influence of the US, the main international ally of Israel, on military decisions taken by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in the Gaza conflict.

The US administration of Joe Biden has stressed that it does not wish to see Israeli forces carrying out assaults on medical facilities, and has counselled extreme caution on the part of the Israeli military while conducting operations in surrounding areas.

President Biden said: “My hope and expectation is that there will be less intrusive action relative to hospitals. I remain somewhat hopeful, but the hospital must be protected.”

Read more from world affairs editor Kim Sengupta here

Gaza will be turned into a graveyard if there is not an immediate ceasefire, the SNP has said.

Speaking during Prime Minister’s Questions, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said: “In 2010, the then prime minister and now Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that people in Gaza are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open air prison, does the current Prime Minister not agree that if there is not an immediate ceasefire then all of us in this chamber will be watching on as that open air prison is turned into a graveyard?”

He added: “How much worse does it need to get, 4,609 children are already dead in Gaza, babies in the neo-natal intensive care unit are dying because they don’t have access to oxygen.”

U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths on Wednesday implored Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel.

“Kerem Shalom, please Israel, give us that for our crossing point,” Griffiths told reporters in Geneva.

Griffiths said that the Kerem Shalom crossing was used to carry more than 60% of the truckloads going into Gaza before this conflict.

The aid currently going into Gaza comes from the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border.

A series of resignation would be the largest challenge to Sir Keir’s authority since the early days of his leadership of the party.

Last month four shadow ministers were said to be on resignation watch over Sir Keir’s refusal to back a ceasefire.

The Labour leader was forced to hold a crunch meeting with a group of Muslim Labour MPs to address anger over his handling of the crisis – including comments in which he appeared to back the cutting of power and water to Gaza.

One frontbencher Imran Hussain, the MP for Bradford East, did resign saying he was quitting his role as a shadow minister to be able to “strongly advocate” for a ceasefire.

The decision not to back a ceasefire also prompted the exodus of a series of councillors from the party.

Labour MPs will be under a three-line whip to back the party’s amendment to the King’s Speech calling for longer humanitarian pauses in Gaza.

They will also be under a three-line whip to abstain on the SNP’s amendment calling for a ceasefire, meaning frontbenchers will almost certainly be sacked if they rebel and support it.

A Labour spokesman said: “This is a whipped vote and every MP knows what the consequence of that means.”

The spokesman acknowledged that shadow ministers had been given some freedom to speak in favour of a ceasefire, but said a Commons vote was a different matter.

“There is an understanding that there is a difference when it comes to the space that we have allowed, given that we fully understand that this is a very challenging subject … in the debate that there has been up to this point, but at the point at which there is a vote in Parliament that clearly is something that has a significance to it that everybody understands,” the spokesman said.

Israel’s incursion into Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza has been criticised as “totally unacceptable” by the World Health Organisation’s chief.

Israeli troops entered Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital, on Wednesday as part of their assault on the Palestinian territory.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in Geneva that patients and staff must be protected even if hospitals were used for military purposes.

“Hospitals are not battlegrounds,” he said.

He said that the WHO had lost touch with medical personnel and the organisation had no reports on the number of deaths in Gaza over the last three days, making it difficult to assess the state of their current healthcare system.

He said one WHO staff member had described it as: “No water, no electricity, only bombing, bombing, bombing.”

Israel forces have raided Gaza’s largest hospital, with doctors saying inside al-Shifa saying it is a “gamble to move between the buildings” as gunfire continues.

Witnesses say the troops have been searching wards of questioning people inside, having surrounded the complex where more than 2,000 patients, staff and people sheltering have been trapped without electricity and supplies.

Israel’s military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that troops were carrying out “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in Shifa Hospital” which the military claim sits atop a command centre and a network of militant tunnels. It is an accusation Hamas denies.

Read the full report from international correspondent Bel Trew below

Pennsylvania mother Noha Abuolba and her two teenage daughters were travelling south on a bus through Gaza on their way to the border.

As the family made their way along the coastal road, what they believe to be an Israeli airstrike hit their vehicle, followed by gunfire. Multiple people died around them. Eighteen-year-old Saja Abuolba suffered shrapnel wounds in her shoulder and back. Her sister, 17-year-old Farah, lost two fingers on her left hand.

Read the full story from Richard Hall here