Does our local MP support Hamas?

‘An absolute disgrace’: the Shadow Justice Secretary says our MP showed sympathy for Hamas. Here’s what actually happened in 2010

I was surprised to see Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick, and now Solicitor General in Andy Burnham’s government, described as ‘an absolute disgrace’ by Nick Timothy, the Shadow Justice Secretary, in The Telegraph. Timothy accuses him of showing ‘sympathy for Hamas’.

Unused to seeing our genial MP characterised as a supporter of terrorism, I was shocked, until I looked into who was actually involved and realised the political sleight of hand the shadow minister has employed.

Andy Slaughter went on a fact-finding trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories in November 2010 with Jeremy Corbyn, sponsored by Friends of Al-Aqsa and the pro-Palestinian nonprofit Middle East Monitor.

In the interests of balance, around 180 MPs in the previous parliament made more than 240 paid-for trips to Israel, according to Declassified UK, which bases the information on MPs’ declared interests, through organisations such as Conservative Friends of Israel, which has funded 118 sitting Tory MPs on 160 trips since 2012, and Labour Friends of Israel, which has paid for 32 Labour MPs to travel to Israel since they were first elected.

The Telegraph quoted the Monitor‘s report that the delegation Andy Slaughter joined met with Palestinian representatives of both Hamas and the rival Palestinian Authority’s Fatah party.

They published a photograph of a smiling Slaughter with Mohammed Totah, Ahmed Attoun and Khaled Abu-Arafeh. Totah was at the time a Hamas MP. Abu-Arafeh was a former Minister of Jerusalem Affairs. Attoup was also a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

At the time of the visit, Hamas had a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and a legitimate political party, in the way the Republican movement in Northern Ireland had the IRA and Sinn Fein. Hamas won a majority in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections and formed the government of Gaza as a result.

Britain declared the military wing of Hamas a terrorist organisation in 2001, but didn’t extend proscription to the whole of Hamas until November 2021, twenty years later. Sixteen years ago, when Andy Slaughter met the political representatives of Hamas, it would have been considered completely acceptable for British politicians to meet their equivalents in Gaza.

Either Timothy doesn’t know this, which suggests he isn’t on top of his brief, or he does know it and is muckraking for clickbait, hoping Telegraph readers aren’t well informed enough to spot the distinction.

Slaughter wrote about his visit for The Guardian at the time, in which he noted:

‘There is now a procession of delegations into Gaza, most notably the 60 European parliamentarians who visited last month’, led by the late Gerald Kaufman MP, (who was Jewish), and there were also behind the scenes talks going on with the Bush administration.

According to the Times of Israel, Attoun was arrested by Israeli authorities and deported from Jerusalem to the West Bank in 2011. Totah and Abu-Arafeh were later arrested after spending 18 months inside an International Committee of the Red Cross compound in East Jerusalem to avoid detention and deportation.

East Jerusalem is disputed territory, and the Israeli government deemed the men to be there illegally, cancelling their residency permits.

In response to The Telegraph‘s article, the Solicitor General’s office issued this statement:

‘Appointments to the Government are carefully considered by the Prime Minister.

‘The Solicitor General will carry out his duties, including any role in oversight of prosecutorial decisions, with the political impartiality and adherence to the rule of law that the role demands.

‘The Solicitor General has been consistent in condemning the actions of Hamas and has long supported a two-state solution in which a viable Palestinian state and Israel can live in peace side by side’.

If you want to understand more about Andy Slaughter’s views on Israel and Palestine, read the piece he wrote after he was sacked for voting for a ceasefire three years ago.