Why is the Welsh parliament condemning Israel?

This week, the Welsh parliament announced that it ‘condemns the Israeli Government’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza’ and ‘calls on the international community to…bring pressure to bear on the Israeli Government to end the siege of Gaza which contravenes international law and the basic human rights of Palestinian civilians’. Those were the terms of a motion laid by Plaid Cymru and passed by Members of the Senedd by 24 to 19, with 13 abstentions. The motion was not entirely without merit: it condemned Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians and called for the hostages to be released. But this story nonetheless offers a signal from the devolution crisis that no one in Downing Street or Whitehall wants to acknowledge.

Whether you agree with the terms of the motion or not is irrelevant. The more pressing question is why the Welsh parliament is debating motions on reserved matters such as foreign affairs. True, this was a foreign affairs debate, not foreign affairs legislation, which would be struck down by the courts if it was ever attempted.