To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking, with international partners, to calm the violence and build a lasting peace between the government of Israel and the Palestinian people.
My Lords, in 1962 I had the great privilege of spending a term studying in Jerusalem. Signs of conflict were everywhere; there was barbed wire across the streets and pockmarks in the walls made by bullets from recent fighting. The time was tense and difficult. But now, more than 60 years later, the situation is even worse—the tension greater, the violence more bitter. Some of us will remember that the two great political issues in 1962 were the Cold War and apartheid. We could see no end to the Cold War, but in 1989 the Berlin Wall was torn down. We did not expect apartheid to come to an end without massive bloodshed, but in 1994 Nelson Mandela was elected peacefully president of South Africa. Is it not a terrible indictment of leadership on all sides and the whole international community that still nothing very much has happened, and that the situation is in fact much worse now than it was in 1962? The hopes of Oslo in 1993 and the hopes of so many since then have come to absolutely nothing.
It is understandable that the eyes of the world have been elsewhere this year—on Ukraine, the women of Afghanistan and Iran, and the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey—but during this time tension in Israel has risen and violence has increased. In January, a Palestinian boy throwing stones in the West Bank was killed. Then in a raid by security forces, nine Palestinians were killed in Jenin. On the same day, a 13 year-old boy shot seven Israelis outside a synagogue in east Jerusalem. The following day, rockets were fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip and there was a further exchange of fire. A few days later, there was a major raid in Nablus, in which 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 injured. A few days after that, a Palestinian killed two Israeli settlers. This was followed by settlers running amok, torching homes and cars, with the IDF apparently unwilling or unable to stop it. Once again, families are left bereaved, young Palestinians are left even more desperate, and more Israeli peace-lovers are left in despair at the present Government.
After that outbreak of violence, Israeli and Palestinian delegates made a joint commitment to take immediate steps to end it. This followed talks in Aqaba between the parties, alongside the United States and Egyptian officials. The announcement said that Palestinian and Israeli sides
“affirmed their commitment to all previous agreements between them, and to work towards just and lasting peace”.
Both sides also committed to immediately working to end unilateral measures for a period of three to six months, which included an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months and to stop the authorisation of any outposts for six months. The parties agreed to reconvene in Egypt in March this year—this month—to determine progress made towards these goals. However, this statement was immediately called into question by some members of the Israeli Government, including Mr Netanyahu himself, who denied that there would be a settlement freeze or any kind of pause.
My Lords, let me be the first to congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, on the well-worded title of this debate and on his opening remarks. He is a most distinguished cleric, and it is very fitting that a cleric should choose to put a plea for peace in the title. He will be aware that one of the core prayers we recite in the Jewish religion, which some people recite three times a day, has the words:
“He who makes peace in his high places, may he make peace upon us and upon all Israel”.
Peace is the most sought after of all man’s objectives in our prayers. So I am grateful to him for moving this debate.
I am also grateful to the authorities for moving it from yesterday, when I believe it was originally scheduled to take place, because yesterday was the Jewish festival of Purim, where, incidentally, and most unusually, a requirement is to drink a lot of alcohol. So it would not have been a great day for me to be standing up in your Lordships’ House. As with many Jewish festivals, we celebrated the fact that evil people did not overthrow and kill the local Jewish population, as they sought to do. We were saved by a clever bit of manoeuvring by Esther, a Jewess who achieved favour in high places. It is a longer story, but we will leave it at that.
None the less, Jewish people have always been on the defensive and, not surprisingly, concerned for their own survival. When I was in Manchester city centre recently with my youngest daughter, we passed a demonstration with a red, green, black and white flag. They were chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. My daughter asked me, “What does that mean?” I had to explain to her that this was a group of people on UK soil seeking to wipe out the Jewish state of Israel. Israel faces similar threats now, some organised and promoted by Hamas and PFLP, and some random, such as the killing last month of the brothers, Hillel and Yagael Yaniv.
7:46 pm
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for introducing this important debate in such a fair, if somewhat sobering, way. It is a sobering topic.
Once again, the vicious cycle of violence has rapidly spun out of control: there have been 550 terrorist attacks, and too many Israeli and Palestinian deaths, in the last 12 months alone. It is easy to get involved in the blame game. Heaven knows there is enough blame to go around—we might hear some tonight. Tit for tat has taken over. Reconciliation has been replaced by retribution and revenge after generations of mistrust and antipathy. So is there anything at all that we in the international community can do that will influence those on the ground?
As we have heard, Israel agreed to stop all West Bank settlement activity for six months at the recent meeting of security officials in Aqaba. Of course, that was immediately derided by Hamas and right-wingers in the Israeli Government. But that should not detract from what was a remarkable step for the first time in many years.
Sadly, I fear that brave speeches by the US and UK ambassadors at the UN have had little effect on the ground. Of course, we should not give up, despite the limited response. So where can any external influence have any effect? The USA has historically had some influence on Israel. Clearly, we should be supporting that, and our friends in the Middle East—Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—who may have been, and one hopes should be, able to influence the Palestinians. We should influence both sides.
However, we seem to have ignored one resource, which should be called upon now: the Arab citizens of Israel, who make up over 20% of the population. We have heard a little about them. They overwhelmingly want to see a two-state solution, according to all of the polls, but they live uncomfortably between the two sides. They could form an invaluable link as go-betweens between the warring parties. Have our Government had any discussions with the Israeli authorities about encouraging them to engage fully with their Israeli Arab friends, many of whom occupy high office in Israeli society?
My Lords, having read the extensive coverage in the newspapers over the weekend, I feel that it is important to point out that Israel today has the most extreme Government in its history. Haaretz calls it a “Government of darkness”, as right-wing politicians from parties that are overtly Jewish supremacist, anti-Arab, anti-women and homophobic dominate it. I was impressed by the accounts given in the Guardian on Friday by Simon Schama and Margaret Hodge, documenting some of the things happening under the new Israeli Government. These extremist Ministers now have major powers over the Occupied Territories, as authority has been transferred from military to civilian rule, contravening international law on occupation. I hope that the Minister will enlighten us with the Government’s view on that.
A Haaretz editorial also states:
“In light of the fact that there is no intention of granting civil rights to the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank, the result of the agreement is a formal, full-fledged apartheid regime.”
Some of us from Parliament went on a recent visit—not so recent now, it was actually in November. I have to say that I was impressed by those on both sides who were working together for solutions and peace. For example, there were the heroic doctors working in the underresourced Palestinian hospital in Jerusalem. There was the courage of relief and grass-roots support agencies, many of which are now banned organisations—and many of them actually Israeli—which were also working for peace. I pay tribute to all of them for the work that they do and the risks they take with their own well-being and that of their families. There was the determination of a family in the Hebron hills living in a cave, their previous homes having been demolished so many times that they believed that that was the only way they could remain living in their current home.
But in spite of this, a massive expansion of settlements is planned, even though there is increased settler violence, which we were told has certainly been ignored by the authorities. In the Observer on Sunday there was an article about an olive farmer. It was headlined:
My Lords, it would be quite wrong if this House simply overlooked the worsening security situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories, so my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries is to be congratulated on obtaining this debate.
To those like me who have spent a substantial part of their professional life working for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute and working to give effect to UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was, of course, drafted and sponsored by Britain, and its successor resolutions, these are dispiriting days. There is an Israeli Government who have turned their back on that solution, a Palestinian Authority which has no new contribution to make, activists in Gaza whose sole response to any rise in tension is to fire rockets into Israel, and a slide, once again, towards violence right across the region in both Israel and the Occupied Territories.
It is easy to despair, but the hard fact is that there will be no stability and security in that region on the present basis—no number of Abraham accords, no amount of crackdowns by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories, no expansion of illegal settlements will bring that security and stability about.
What should Britain with its historic responsibilities for the state of the region be doing in these unpromising circumstances? Faced with Israeli intransigence to even talking about a two-state solution, we should make it clear that we will legitimise nothing less than that. We should do so by recognising a Palestinian state. Plenty of others have already done so.
Our policy of endless prevarication over recognition is a bankrupt one. It was defensible while negotiations were under way—and I myself defended it for many long years—but no longer even faintly credible. Will that bring about a solution? Of course not. But it would show that we will not be a party to any abdication of responsibility for the present drift toward tit-for-tat violence and a rejection of international law.
7:56 pm
Lord Stone of Blackheath (Non-Afl)
My Lords, all these problems in the Middle East are my fault. In 1967, I was a volunteer in the Six Day War, so I started all this mess. However, in the following decades, I have been trying to help make peace. At Marks & Spencer, we encouraged Israeli manufacturers to work with Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese companies and become partners with one another. With the help of Tony Blair, I got Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Tesco to buy homegrown foods and textiles from the West Bank and Gaza to help them to grow. But those and many other projects did not create peace either, so I am still to blame.
I have three questions for the Minister. First, will the UK Government recognise the state of Palestine? This would then mean that rather than a recognised state—Israel—trying to negotiate with a disparate people, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, you would have two states negotiating about their borders and citizenship et cetera, and it would make it more fair and viable. It could change everything if our country, that issued the Balfour Declaration and was a mandate authority, would agree to extend recognition to a Palestinian state.
Secondly, will the UK make good on its commitment as the first country on earth to endorse the concept of creating an international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace, which can engage a new generation, at scale, in the project of peacebuilding rather than allowing them to fall into their current despair and enmity, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, described?
Thirdly, will the UK signal its strong opposition to any legislation that taxes, chills or delegitimises the work of Israeli-Palestinian civil society, which this Israeli Government are threatening to do? Also, in May at the G7 leaders’ communique in Japan, let us please push for language that clearly shows to the governing authorities in the region that civil society is a “red line” for the international community.
Finally, I suggest that the Minister meets John Lyndon of the Alliance for Middle East Peace—ALLMEP—who is doing great work in the field; Gershon Baskin, who has been talking with both sides for decades, and Tony Klug, who has written many wise briefs on how to resolve these issues.
I close by mentioning the late Rabbi David Geffen, who died this weekend and was the founder of Loving Classroom, a project that is teaching children in Arabic, Hebrew and English in schools across the world to love, respect and befriend children on all sides. Can we support this project by adopting Loving Classroom in all schools in the UK, where it is already making a difference in several schools?
My Lords, I refer the House to my non-financial registered interest as president of Conservative Friends of Israel. I also pay tribute to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for obtaining this debate. I recall the wonderful work he did as chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews.
I am concerned about comments in a recent letter from the Foreign Secretary effectively boycotting an Israeli Minister. It is not about whether one agrees with Minister Ben-Gvir. We work with all elected Israeli politicians, and we must be very careful not to go down a route of suggesting that our support for Israel is somehow conditional on any individual politician.
Could we be holding Israel to a different standard from other countries? It seems that we are fine working with Prime Minister Meloni’s extreme right-wing Italian Government and with some kleptocracies and dictatorships, but working with elected officials who could be tried and found guilty in democratic Israel is somehow not fine.
No one wants an escalation of the recent troubles. The discussions in Aqaba that have been mentioned were important, and the comments by the Israeli Finance Minister have been universally condemned, led by Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Herzog, who stated that the idea of Israeli citizens taking the law into their own hands, rioting and committing violence against innocent people, is wrong. It will always be wrong.
The question posed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, is about building a lasting peace between the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. He spoke eloquently, looking for hope. There is a peace train that has left the station and is making its way across the region. The Abraham Accords train has visited Manama in Bahrain. It has travelled through Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE and meandered through the hills of Jerusalem in Israel. It has reached Rabat in Morocco, and the journey has continued to Khartoum in Sudan. It is possible that the train is making its way to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
My Lords, like others I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for procuring this debate and for the way he phrased the topic.
Does the Minister agree that the recent upsurge in violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories is a tragic reminder to us all of the need for a political process leading to a two-state solution? A further complicating factor now is the election in the only real democracy in the region, Israel, of the most right-wing and nationalist Government in its history.
Does he agree that there are barriers to peace outside the control of Israel or the Palestinians? First and foremost is Iran, a state sponsor, supplier and facilitator of terrorism, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and cells in the West Bank. I know that my next question was discussed at the end of the Report debate on the Bill earlier this evening, but I will ask it again because it is far too important not to repeat it and repeat it again: when will the IRGC, the armed wing of Iran’s terrorism, be proscribed in the United Kingdom?
Given the UK’s deep and historic ties in the Middle East, it is disappointing that it was not even at the table in 2020 in negotiations on the normalisation of relations between Israel and four Arab states. What plans do the Government have, if any, to support further normalisation between Israel and the Arab world? Lastly, when will the UK contribute to the international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace and follow up its very warm words of support for the fund with a concrete contribution?
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My first question for the Minister is: what role are our own Government playing in this process? Is he in a position to clarify what has been agreed and what progress, if any, has been made with a view to the reconvened meeting later this month?
The reason I asked for this debate is not just the recent level of violence, severe though it has been, but because there will continue to be violence unless there is hope. At the moment, there is no hope. Where is the hope in the situation? What sign of hope can be given to young Palestinians, or to those Israelis who have lost their family or friends and who have sincerely wanted and worked for a solution? Studies of those who survived harsh imprisonment during World War Two showed that the people most likely to survive were those who had something to live for—for example, a hope of seeing a loved one again. Without hope, people become desperate. Since Oslo in 1993, the hope has been held out of a two-state solution. Recently, our Government have once again committed themselves to that solution, as have various other international bodies, the UN and the EU. However, at the same time, I have read—as I am sure your Lordships have—commentators saying that the two-state solution is dead and that nothing will now revive the peace process. Is it really dead? If it is, what hope can be given?
The idea of a single state, once dismissed by most people, has surfaced again. Is this a serious idea—a single state with equality for all its citizens? In a recent article, Jonathan Freedland, while not arguing for this, nevertheless pointed out that overall turnout in the November election topped 70% but among Israeli Arabs it was just 53.2%. He argued that if Arabs had voted in the same numbers as Jews, Netanyahu would not be Prime Minister. He suggested that to remedy this will require,
“first, a wholesale change in mindset on the part of the mainstream Israeli left, one that at last listens to Palestinian demands for equality inside the green line and an end to occupation beyond it. That could, in turn, prompt a sea change among Palestinian-Israelis, a recognition that a de facto boycott of Israel’s political institutions might have made sense when a separate Palestinian state seemed on the horizon, but makes no sense now. It only strengthens those bent on making their lives worse.”
I am, of course, aware of the arguments on this issue, but I will not enter into them now. My point is about the total lack of hope in anything at the moment. I believe it would be quite wrong simply for the international community to shrug its shoulders and assume that nothing can be done. While the recent meeting in Jordan to see what might be done in the immediate term to reduce the level of violence is to be welcomed, it is not enough.
I recently asked a friend living in Jerusalem if he could find any hope in the present situation. He wrote that he looked to the individuals committed to peace and reconciliation, “the mother of an Israeli soldier killed at a checkpoint in the Second Intifada joining a group of bereaved from both sides of conflict and becoming best friends with a Palestinian man whose daughter was killed at a checkpoint by an Israeli soldier, or the man at the Tent of Nations who is in the longest-running legal dispute to keep the family olive farm despite beatings, intimidation and Kafkaesque legal dealings”. His mantra was: “We refuse to be enemies”. These are people who belong to the Parents Circle-Families Forum—PCFF—a body that I have long admired. This group is made up of parents, Jewish and Palestinian, who have all lost family members in the conflict. However, apparently even the PCFF is being threatened with tough new restrictions on its activities by Israel’s recently elected coalition Government. They are planning to curtail the organisation’s access to high schools where, for years, bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families have been allowed to meet groups of teenagers before they are called up for any service. If this is the case, I hope that our own Government will vigorously protest.
So, in the name of those Israeli and Palestinian parents, we cannot allow the present situation to continue fluctuating between simmering violence and its inevitable explosion forever. Meanwhile, as we are all aware, we have to face the fact that, as settlements continue to grow in number and size, the viability of a Palestinian state gets more and more called into question; the Palestinian position, already weak, becomes even weaker; and young people on both sides become even more desperate.
Let us have some honesty in the international community. Is the two-state solution dead? If not, let us have some real initiatives for reviving it. In 1978, that good man President Carter, who is now in his last days in a hospice, called together Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat to agree a framework for peace in the Middle East. Where is the Jimmy Carter for our time? We cannot simply shrug and resign ourselves to the fact that this will go on forever. A new initiative is needed. I beg to move.
I move the point of the debate. What can be done? I know Jerusalem best, because I am chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation in the UK. I will be there next week, running a 10k around the city, with citizens from every background—Jewish, Muslim, Christian and no faith—all running together. It is a most uplifting experience. We are working hard to make Jerusalem a better place. I am not convinced that the UK Government, or any Government, can do as much as we would like in the cause of peace. It is the people, the individuals, who can do so much.
We are working hard to calm tensions there. For example, with British donors’ money, we are building two large community sports centres and swimming pools in East Jerusalem. British donors are paying for a project with the municipality to train new Arabic-speaking social workers, who will help thousands of Arab families.
We continue to abhor the fact that at least 31 Palestinian schools are named after terrorists and, likewise, that an Israeli Minister seems to call for the wipeout of a Palestinian village. This was rightly condemned by the head of the IDF and others in Israel.
Initiatives such as those taken by British donors, as I have described, can make a difference. In a recent poll conducted by the Washington Institute in East Jerusalem, half of the Palestinians asked said that, if they had to make a choice, they would prefer to become citizens of Israel than of the Palestinian state. Their recent experience of access to Israel’s healthcare, social welfare, benefits and jobs is making a difference. We need to ensure that this direction of travel is continued.
“They ransack our village for sport.”
That is one farmer’s story of settler violence. Palestinian homes have been demolished and when we were there a primary school funded by foreign aid was demolished to accommodate the settlers’ demands for more land. There is a huge sense of injustice as families have who lived there for generations are evicted to give more land to incoming settlers who rampage their villages.
I agree with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, that hope is very much lacking at present, certainly in the Occupied Territories. I hope that we here can promote action by our own Government that can work to support change. Humanitarian support and medical supplies are urgently needed. Funding for the relief agencies and grass-roots organisations which deliver the aid and support is also needed. I hope that the example of Simon Schama and Margaret Hodge will mean that supporters of Israel who want to see it prosper will see that what is being done at the moment is counter to that. The noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, talked earlier about the work that goes on in Jerusalem. I know much good work of this kind that goes on, but it is ruined when we get the provocative statements and the ambitions, particularly of the Ministers, Gvir and Smotrich.
As I said, I hope that the Government will lead diplomatic pressure where violations of human rights and international law are taking place on both sides and that we can, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, find some leader to reinitiate the peace process and work for a just and lasting peace.
In addition, I hope we really will sustain our humanitarian support for UNRWA and for the suffering people in the Occupied Territories and Gaza. Allowing cuts in our aid programme to fall on them would be both shameful and counterproductive, and I hope the Minister can give us the latest FCDO commitments on those programmes which have been so important over the years.
We should engage at every level with the Government of Israel and with its people to demonstrate that we continue to value their state and their democracy, however much we may disagree with some of their present policies. That is no easy path to tread, but it is still worth while in my view.
I urge my noble friend the Minister to ensure that His Majesty’s Government will join the Negev Forum for regional co-operation, as has been suggested by my friend the Foreign Minister of Bahrain, who I met only last Friday. Can my noble friend tell me what we are doing to get that train to visit Ramallah? What are the Government doing to ensure that the Palestinians purchase a ticket to join this remarkable and exciting initiative? For the sake of all peoples in the region, and especially for their own children, the Palestinians must not miss the train and should be urged to get on board.