TWO Blackburn with Darwen Labour councillors have tabled a motion to the authority's annual Policy Council calling for a permanent ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Gaza.

The resolution from Bastwell and Daisyfield ward's Cllr Shaukat Hussain and Wensley Fold ward's Cllr Sabahat Imtiaz will be debated on Thursday.

The move follows eight former Labour councillors leaving the party over leader Sir Keir Starmer's stance on the Gaza conflict and forming a new '4BwD Independent Group' group on the council with former Tory councillor Altaf 'Tiger' Patel who quit the Conservative Party over its attitude to the conflict.

The current ceasefire is scheduled to expire after Monday, as Israel and Hamas prepare for a fourth exchange of militant-held hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Israel has said it would extend the ceasefire by one day for every 10 additional hostages released.

Hamas has also said it hopes to extend the four-day truce, which came into effect on Friday after several weeks of indirect negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

The motion reads: "This council notes with horror, the increasing number of deaths in Gaza as a result of the Israeli response to the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7.

"The council condemns Hamas for its unprovoked attack on Israel, and in taking over 200 hostages – many being civilians, including innocent women and children.

"Israel’s response to the attack has, however, been utterly out of proportion, with over 12,000 innocent Gazan citizens killed at the time of writing.

"In addition to those killed, over two million Gazans have been impacted either through the loss of their homes, loss of family members, lack of food, water, energy or medicine supplies – all of which have been stopped by Israel.

"This council believes such measures which amount to collective punishment to be in breach of international humanitarian law.

"This council also recognises that there will inevitably be large numbers of orphaned children as a result of the continuing violence and calls upon the government to put in place a scheme whereby such orphans can be adopted by families in the UK – this would be similar to the schemes introduced for Ukrainian orphans.

"The only sustainable solution to the dispute in Palestine and Israel is for peaceful negotiations to take place with the ultimate aim of a two state solution where both Palestinians and Israelis can exist independently in autonomous states.

"This council therefore calls for an immediate ceasefire; the release of the hostages taken by Hamas and a resumption of all humanitarian aid including food, water, sanitary products and fuel to the population of Gaza.

"We call on our national leaders of all political parties to support the calls for a ceasefire, following which we ask our prime minister to work with other world leaders to facilitate peace talks.

"This council calls on our chief executive to write to the prime minister, foreign, commonwealth and development secretary, and our members of parliament, to seek the implementation of these requests."