My Lords, I am very pleased that we have the opportunity to air our views on this matter. I am sorry that it is in what I call the graveyard slot of the week but there it is. That is not my fault; I suspect it is down to the Government Whips but, anyway, I am very grateful that we are having this debate.
Many have dismissed the proposals as yet another plan in the decades-old series of talks which have never produced any benefit for the indigenous people of Palestine but have served as a smokescreen for the relentless expansion of Israel into Palestinian lands, against international law and against United Nations Security Council resolutions. But we have to take the plan seriously so let us look at it, while remembering that years ago, the PLO had already accepted a state on only 22% of the land designated by the original United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.
This plan consolidates a string of land islands, with more to come—many call them Bantustans—which have been created by the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements into the West Bank, cutting off Palestinian communities from each other. As compensation for the land taken, Israel proposes that the Palestinians should have a patch of desert land near the Egyptian border—a hugely generous gesture. They are promised that roads and bridges, underground and overground, will link these Bantustans and make sure that Israelis do not ever have to come into contact with Palestinians. Many people have described that as apartheid.
I do not apologise for mentioning the two words Bantustans and apartheid because today, as anyone who is a Guardian reader may have seen, there is a letter in it from 50 ex-Ministers and leaders in Europe and across the world, describing the plan as similar to South African apartheid. It is not just me but those people, who include Douglas Alexander, who used to be the Secretary of State for International Development, Ben Bradshaw and Alan Duncan, who are both still in Parliament, the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Patten, who are in this House. I recommend that your Lordships all look at this letter because they have more authority than I will ever have. Who else? There is Jack Straw, our former Foreign Secretary, and the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, another Member of this House. They are all past Ministers; looking now at the Minister sitting in his place, I hope that he will have similar sentiments when he is a past Minister, even if he cannot have them now. I am only teasing.
East Jerusalem will stay in the hands of Israel, and the Palestinians are told to make their capital in Abu Dis. That is a village just outside the barrier wall, of course, with no access whatever to East Jerusalem or the mosque. Nothing really has changed from the present situation and in case some of your Lordships are happy for the Palestinians to have their own defined borders at last—never mind it looking like a Swiss cheese, as someone once described it—we must add that the most important part of this derogatory offer is that Israel will control all security, all Palestinian territorial waters, all airspace and all the crossings between Palestine and Israel. Palestinians will have no sovereignty.
4:43 pm
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, the House should be grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity for this timely debate. I declare an interest: I have been involved in the region for much of my life—during my ministerial days at the Foreign Office, obviously, but also I can never forget my first visit to Israel. I arrived one evening and the 1967 war started the next morning. I was there for the duration of the war and it was an extremely interesting experience in which I had some very deep conversations with Israelis. I should also mention, perhaps, that in more recent times I have been chairman of the Middle East committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The first salient point in any consideration is that the formal recognition of the State of Palestine is long overdue, because, without that status, how on earth can the Palestinians feel that they have an equal place in any discussions? Secondly, our deep historical responsibilities always come home to me; we played a key part in the creation of the State of Israel. Another point is that, in international friendships, between states as well as between people, candour is absolutely indispensable. I take my friendship with many people in Israel extremely seriously, but that means that we must speak honestly and candidly, very often with them, to the Government of Israel. It also means that in our relationship with the United States, from which I have also gained a great deal in my life—a nation towards which I feel very warmly—candour is indispensable.
At the moment, that candour demands of us that we emphasise the indispensability of justice and respect. No people paid a higher price for the creation of the State of Israel than the Palestinian people. It has therefore been a grinding experience for them over the years to be humiliated, dismissed and denied an opportunity to play a positive and creative part in building their own future and the future of the region.
This present plan brought by President Trump was a disaster. I cannot understand why our Prime Minister felt it incumbent on him to say that it was a stepping stone from which we could build. It was a disaster, and if ever candour demanded that we should say so clearly, this was the time. In the formalisation of the creation of, in effect, Bantustans—the situation is very similar to South Africa, in which I have taken a deep interest over many years—what about the status of Jerusalem as the capital for the Palestinian people? What about the vast issue of refugees? Where were these in the proposals?
In a long life working in the sphere of humanitarian work, international relations and the rest, I have come to certain firm conclusions. One is that we must remember that an enduring peace is a peace-building process; it is not a matter of imposing solutions or of short-cuts. Building peace is a patient, persistent task. If you are to build peace, that means that all parties to that peace feel a deep sense of ownership. We had better face that quickly, because otherwise we are in for a long, disturbing future in the Middle East.
My Lords, if today’s Times is correct, I should start by wishing the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, a happy birthday, although I cannot help wondering what sin he must have committed to have to spend his birthday debating the intractable subject of the Middle East peace process. None the less, I wish him a happy birthday.
I read the Trump plan with disbelief and despair. If it were ever to be implemented, it would represent not only a disaster for the Palestinian people and a threat to world peace far beyond the Middle East, giving as it does the green light to annexation and dispossession, but above all an unmitigated and unparalleled catastrophe for the people of Israel.
The safety and security of Israel is, in my view, critical not only for the Israeli people but for the world at large. After the horrors of the Holocaust and the centuries of prejudice, pogroms and expulsions, the ability of the people of Israel to live in security in their own democratic state is essential to the values of a liberal international order. It is something that we must defend to the end.
We have heard some references to Israel and apartheid South Africa. I have always resisted those comparisons; anybody who has had the misfortune, as I did, of spending time in apartheid South Africa knows that the democratic State of Israel is a million miles away from the vile and poisonous ideology of apartheid. The Trump plan, however, resembles nothing so much as a map of the Bantustans. In any event, as I have said in previous debates in this House, there is no escaping the fact that while the State of Israel is a very different place from apartheid South Africa, the situation that prevails in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is very similar to that which operated in apartheid South Africa: the occupation and settlement of land; the checkpoints; the separate laws; the night raids; the destruction of homes and property; the closed roads; the ongoing humiliations; the deepening anger; the loss of hope; the spread of violence; and the steady dehumanisation of one side by the other. None of this should be the least bit surprising. Whenever one people seeks to dominate another through occupation and settlement, it is inevitable that similar methods are used and similar reactions engendered.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, for securing this important debate. I also express my gratitude to the Minister and to his officials for the careful but clear Answers to my Parliamentary Written Questions relevant to this debate that he gave on 11 and 13 February.
Your Lordships’ House will be aware from my interventions in earlier debates that I am the only Anglican bishop who is a member of the Vatican-mandated Holy Land Co-ordination group, which visits Christian communities in Israel and Palestine every January. I also make at least one other visit to the region each year and will be on ecumenical pilgrimage there next week. Last year, I was also in Egypt with His Eminence Archbishop Angaelos, Coptic Archbishop of London, and other church leaders.
In his Answers to me of 13 February, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said that Her Majesty’s Government want to see
“a contiguous West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as part of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders”,
and I wholly share the Government’s aspiration. However, in describing the plan published by the United States Government, Her Majesty’s Government’s statement that
“All serious proposals for peace deserve a fair hearing”
does, I believe, two things. The chairman of the Vatican Holy Land Co-ordination group, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clifton, and I, wrote to the Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa on 7 February contending that the analysis of the local churches in the Holy Land is that these are not a serious basis for peace but amount to a codification of the Government of Israel’s positions. Given that previous, serious attempts at peace, when they did not succeed, were followed by prolonged periods of bitter disillusionment, it can bring us no confidence when a plan such as this is published. I have to say that the manner of publication undermined any attempt to bring the Palestinian Authority to the negotiating table as an equal partner.
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am Jewish and have relations who had to flee Europe as refugees or were, sadly, killed for their religion. I understand that the Palestinians are angry. They are confined and suppressed and have no country. I am sure the Palestinian people want a civilised, democratic country, but unless and until their leadership—both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas—accept and recognise Israel’s right to exist, the Palestinian people are in limbo.
I support peace. I support a two-state solution. As anti-Semitism rears its ugly head again across the West, I absolutely support the need for a Jewish homeland. But the Palestinian people are languishing—their children fed hate and incitement against their Jewish neighbours—and continually reject offers of peace. They name their schools after terrorists. Their curriculum and school textbooks glorify suicide bombing and incite children to hate their neighbours.
Does my noble friend agree with me that, unless and until we can create an environment of acceptance, the prospects for peace—from whichever plan or quarter they may come—are vanishingly small? Israel has shown itself willing to withdraw from settlements in the hope of peace, but the evacuation of Gaza led to an intensification of violence, incitement, rocket attacks and terror tunnels.
These United States plans are a catalyst for restarting discussions, not a final version. They are aimed at promoting peaceful coexistence, but trust has broken down. Trust in a partnership for peace needs to be rebuilt, but we also need a home for the Jewish people after millennia of prejudice, oppression and death. As we recall the liberation of concentration camp prisoners just 75 years ago—still within the lifetime of survivors who had nowhere to run to, no country they could call home—the Jewish state is absolutely vital. Every piece of this land has been fought for with huge sacrifices.
My Lords, a leading German social democrat declared to his countrymen at the time of the Treaty of Versailles that the hand that signed the treaty would be signing its own death warrant. Such would surely be the fate of any Palestinian leader who dared to sign what Trump called the “deal of the century” or “peace vision”. This bird will not fly.
The initiative was not an unexpected bolt from the blue but the culmination of a series of one-sided initiatives, all taken without any consultation with the Palestinians, brought down like tablets of stone from the mountain. All such initiatives were highly partisan and were greeted enthusiastically by the Israeli Government. These included the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem; the recognition of the exclusive sovereignty of Israel over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights; the withdrawal of US aid for Palestinian refugee camps; the closure of the PLO office in Washington; and, of course, the abandonment of US support for the Iran nuclear accord.
Cumulatively, these completely changed the parameters of US policy and distanced the US from Europe, which has become a mere bystander in the region. They were part of Trump’s obsession to reverse all of Obama’s policies. Can we now seriously expect any Palestinian leader to sit at the negotiating table over this deal? They receive only 70% of the West Bank, and land swops of arid land in the Negev. Yitzhak Rabin, a great leader, stressed that it takes two to tango, and was assassinated for his efforts at peace.
We in the UK boast that we understand the Middle East and its history. Therefore, I was surprised at the warm welcome and support given by Foreign Secretary Raab. I suspect, as a former diplomat, that this was not the position of the regional experts in the FCO but rather the wish of the PM not to have too many fights with the US when he is seeking a post-Brexit trade deal. The highest that can be said in favour of this proposal is that, by shattering all the old assumptions, the conflict might then be reconfigured in preparation for a new start on a new track.
5:10 pm
The Marquess of Lothian (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for having secured this debate. For many years, I have been both a friend of Israel and a friend of Palestine—not always an easy balance to achieve in the ebbing and flowing of the two-state solution arguments—but President Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” has totally upset that balance. I have long championed Israel’s right to security within its legal borders, but when those borders are unilaterally changed by illegal acquisition or settlement —or even worse, as now, by American presidential diktat—that right to security is questionable, probably meaningless and arguably forfeited.
This deal would effectively mark the end of any acceptable two-state solution. The proposed illegal land grab and the quasi-Bantustan configuration of what would be left would hardly meet the concept of a genuine Palestinian state. The proposed swap of fertile land in the Jordan Valley for dusty land east of Gaza would understandably exacerbate—and it has—Palestinian resentment. With the Palestinians sidelined into the extremities of Jerusalem, gone too would be the possibility of a genuinely shared capital.
Over the years, I have spoken to Palestinians of all walks and politics, and I have no reason to doubt the universal intensity of their feeling. I fear violent consequences if these proposals are acted upon. This purported peace plan will strengthen the so-called resistance, and the spread of Israeli jurisdiction into Palestinian land will further stoke the flames of hatred and despair. I cannot understand how a United States Administration, who so frequently preach the importance of the rule of law, can propose a plan that so patently promotes illegality. The current occupation of the West Bank and the settlements within it are already illegal. Now, as well as entrenching these illegalities, they propose further illegal annexations.
United States presidential diktat cannot make what is illegal legal, whether it is in Jerusalem, on the Golan heights or, more widely, under the new proposals. Nor can the eerie silence of Arab neighbours make it any more acceptable. Currently our Government seem at best ambivalent and, at worst, quietly supportive of these proposals—although I still hope not. Since Sykes-Picot our involvement in this region has been somewhat less than honourable. The Balfour Declaration, and that which followed, undertook to respect the interests and rights of the Palestinians. If I may so: have we heck.
Backing the present Trump proposals would be one further betrayal. They are not about peace; they are about politics—the politics of the United States and the politics of Israel. The consequences could well be frightening. Violence in that part of the Middle East is never very far beneath the surface, and violence stoked by genuine grievances is a dangerous concoction. Before it is too late, we need to find our way back to a genuine two-state solution, opening up the possibility of genuine negotiations and, once again, the chance to be a friend of both Israel and Palestine. For that reason, I hope that the Palestinians continue to reject these dishonourable proposals and that, at the same time, we find the courage to do so too.
My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel. I thank my friend of a long time, the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, for many, if not all, of the things she said, and in particular her support for a two-state solution, which I pray for.
However, the Trump plan must be looked at in context. The United States and Israel are both in the midst of election campaigns, as noble Lords might have noticed, even in our newspapers. Both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu clearly believe that they are playing to their respective electorates: Trump sees votes in producing a so-called peace agreement; Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is just about to come before the criminal courts in Israel, sees it as a vote winner in the Israeli election in a few days’ time. He bases this on justified Israeli fears about its very continuing existence.
President Trump is known as a deal maker, although the deals have generally been about pieces of United States real estate. What is the principle of a deal? It is not to offer your final deal until after your original proposals have been rejected. For any deal to be successful in negotiations, it has to be fathered or sponsored by a body or country that is considered reasonably balanced. I do not think that that can be said of the current United States Administration.
There is a role for the UK, Europe and Arab countries to set out what they see as the road to a two-state solution. I do not think that many in your Lordships’ House will think this is the Trump plan. Yes, the border between the two states needs to be defined. There have long been plans for a land swap. When I say “land swap”, it cannot be of pieces of desert; it has to be of suitable land. That was always the understanding of that land swap agreement. However, the main fault in the Trump plan is keeping so many isolated Israeli settlements. These towns and villages will be surrounded by a Palestinian entity. An Israel Defense Forces presence would thus be required to defend each settlement. Sadly, they would be defending them from a belligerent Palestinian entity.
5:20 pm
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Hamas, of course, is blamed for almost everything. Last night it was pointed out to me by a colleague that in the 181 pages of the so-called plan for peace and prosperity, Hamas is mentioned 181 times. There is an obsession with Hamas. Nothing is suggested to stop the suffering of the people of Gaza—the slow starvation, deaths, mutilations and misery of the people there, who are mostly refugees themselves—until Gaza is, in the plan’s words, “demilitarised” of the few weapons it manages to smuggle in or make. We know that cannot happen until the blockade is lifted, and the Israeli Government know that.
There is no return for refugees—ever—and no compensation. Many of them have been living in camps on the West Bank, in Gaza and all over the Middle East, including in Syria, where I visited them on one occasion, and Lebanon. All over the Middle East, there are millions of people who have been living in camps for decades, waiting to go home. The plan, in effect, dissolves refugees as a problem; they are not to be considered. UNRWA is to be abolished—it is already starved of funds by the USA—and the Palestinian state, such as it is, and surrounding Arab states will have to find a solution for refugees and their camps. Over 7 million people are, in effect, being ignored; they do not exist, they do not matter. If this plan were ever implemented, there would still be—and the Israeli people need to realise this—a majority of Palestinian people living between the River Jordan and the sea. I shudder to think what will follow. I wonder what other plans Netanyahu has for the future.
The heralded economic plan, which is given much space in the document—I think more than half the document is devoted to it—and its assumed investment from other countries cannot work while Palestine is under occupation. This plan is for continuing occupation; whatever else can be said about it, the people will not have any freedom of movement or freedom for goods. However its promoters try to dress it up, an economic plan cannot work in this situation.
Is it yet another plan that will gather dust, with its failure no doubt blamed on the Palestinians? I am sure that someone in this Chamber—I am not looking at anyone in particular—is planning to say that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity but neither does Israel miss an opportunity to betray an agreement. It has done it many times. It simply cannot be trusted. The Palestinian leaders were not consulted about this before its publication, and neither was anyone else for that matter—we were not consulted in this country. It is just like the Balfour Declaration, in fact: we did that 100 years ago without consulting anybody. No doubt the Palestinians were rather put off by the eviction of the Palestinian delegation from Washington a couple of years ago and the relocation of the US embassy to East Jerusalem. It is not a very encouraging start to a peace and prosperity plan for the country.
There is still no recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state, and yet we are all expected to recognise Israel as a state even though we do not know what that country’s borders are. Let me be clear: I recognise the statehood and the right to exist of Israel and Palestine within agreed borders for both countries—as I have always hoped, on the 1967 peace line. When will our Government recognise the state of Palestine? It is such an important thing for them to do. What is their reaction to the publicised letter from some noble Lords that Palestine cannot refer Israel to the International Criminal Court because it is not a state? Where are the noble Lords, Lord Pickles and Lord Polak, by the way? They are not present, which is a bit disappointing because I was hoping to hear from them. Are they not interested? Do the Government subscribe to this view? Is the Minister acquainted with the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which has long been accepted in international law and under which Palestine certainly qualifies as a state?
Whenever I am asked to talk about Palestine—it happens an awful lot—the word “humiliation” always comes to mind. For decades, the Palestinian people have been humiliated by the actions of Israel and its forces occupying their land. They have been humiliated by the inaction of the international community and the total disregard of UN resolutions. The Balfour Declaration, which was our country’s responsibility, said that
“nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
This whole terrible injustice is the responsibility of this country. We started it; we are responsible; they are our people and we should be looking after them. We have denied them any protection and we have also humiliated them by our neglect.
I am told every week by Ministers in answer to my Questions that the Government do not approve of this or that atrocity, they have made representations and had discussions with representatives of the Israeli Government and they thoroughly decry what is going on, et cetera. So why can we not set right a wrong that has caused such misery for over 100 years? The people of Palestine are not going to surrender. They are still there, waiting for justice, and there are very many of them.
On a brighter note, does the Minister agree that now we have our freedom, our country can resume its historic place in the world? We have heard it often enough in the last few weeks: we are free; we can implement our history again; Great Britain can be great again. We hear so much about it from the Prime Minister. If we are set free, we can now have our very own foreign policy, independent of anyone else, and with that we can bring justice to Palestine. Can the Minister assure us that we will do just that and not allow our country to fall under the shadow of the United States of America and its puppet master, Israel?
That is why the Trump plan represents such an unmitigated catastrophe for Israel. It is not a peace plan: it is a plan for the permanent national humiliation of the Palestinian people. It would make Israel de facto ruler over millions of people who do not wish to be ruled by it. As a consequence, it guarantees insecurity and instability for Israel, Palestine and the whole region for decades if not centuries to come.
I have always supported the cause of a Palestinian state, not only because it is a just outcome for the Palestinian people but also because it is the only just outcome for the people of Israel. Throughout the time of the coalition, I urged the Government to recognise a Palestinian state. Each time I was told that this was not the right time. As every year passed, more settlements were built, more positions became entrenched and more intractability was introduced. Unless we act soon, there will be no viable state to recognise and no viable peace to achieve.
The only long-term resolution of this conflict will come from an understanding that the aspirations of the Palestinian people are little different from those of the Israeli people and that a just peace can be achieved only on the basis of international law. I have heard some Israelis say, “We have tried trading land for peace and it has not worked” but that is not right. There is only one occasion on which Israel has traded land for peace, when it made its historic peace with Egypt and returned the Sinai. It has lived in peace with Egypt ever since, but in Menachem Begin, it found a Prime Minister with courage. Today the Prime Minister’s office is dripping with self-interest and cowardice. Wise men make peace from positions of strength. Fools believe that strength inevitably lasts for ever.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has sadly deceived many of the people of Israel into embracing the fantasy that it is possible to live in security alongside millions of people who are indefinitely denied their national aspirations and daily subjected to humiliation. The renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz has used this analogy:
“the drowning man clinging to this plank is allowed, by all the rules of natural, objective, universal justice, to make room for himself on the plank, even if in doing so he must push the others aside a little. Even if the others, sitting on that plank, leave him no alternative to force. But he has no natural right to push the others on that plank into the sea.”
The Trump plan would push the Palestinians into the sea. As the founder of the State of Israel, David Ben- Gurion, said in a speech to the Knesset:
“our standing in the world will be determined not by our so-called material riches, and not by our military’s bravery, but by the moral virtue of our undertaking.”
It was the wisdom and humility of Ben-Gurion on which the State of Israel was founded. Let us pray that it is not on the foolishness and arrogance of Netanyahu and Trump that it will founder.
A second and related point is that, even if such arrangements as those proposed by the United States were begun to be enacted, including annexation of territory, I ask the House what peace—if peace it be—can be sustained on injustice? What agreement can there be when one party is not only absent but was not consulted substantively or proportionately in the first place?
My most recent visit to the West Bank, which included Gaza, Ramallah and East Jerusalem, brought home to me the worsening living conditions of the people. There is among the Christian communities a resilient faith and hope for a better tomorrow. But the initial imperative of security, which has created a narrative to justify intervention in more than 50 years of occupation, delivers—as all such unwanted rule does —barriers, confiscation, diversion of resources, curfews, and violence. It is hard not to conclude, as we would in any parallel scenario, that such occupation serves no good purpose.
There is much else one might say, including on what might legitimately offer the State of Israel security on its 1967 borders and its other concerns. One might lament the disappearance of the ancient Jewish communities from across the Middle East and the reasons why. One too might speak of the pressure on, indeed persecution of, the ancient Christian communities of the region. But today I ask again—in some sense I echo other contributors to this debate—whether it is now time for Her Majesty’s Government to heed the views of Parliament and extend full recognition to the Palestinian state?
Israel’s Palestinian neighbours have not shown that they want a smaller Israel; they seem to want no Israel. There were no settlements in 1948, 1967 or 1973. The problem was not where its borders lie but that it has any borders. As so often in our history, it feels as if the aim is erasing the Jewish state and its people. Yes, criticisms can be levelled at the Israeli Government, as at any country’s Government—I am not by any means claiming that the Israeli Government are perfect—but rewarding Palestinian intransigence has not brought peace. The Palestinians keep falling further behind. Are we really serving them well by encouraging unrealistic positions such as the right of return or even a return to exactly the pre-1967 borders, which proved so impossible to defend?
Israel was built by refugees. Many of those Jews were thrown out of neighbouring lands because of their religion—these were not just refugees from Europe—but they had somewhere to go. I therefore implore the Palestinians to be a partner for peace in the Middle East. The Israeli people want to live in peace. They do not want to dominate the Palestinians. They, and I, respect a Palestinian right to a state, but it must be in peaceful coexistence with an Israeli state.
My own background is clear. I joined Labour Friends of Israel in 1966 and had the privilege of chairing the Anglo-Israel Association for four years. I, like my friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, wish to be a candid friend. I admire enormously the vibrancy of Israel’s democracy, the rule of law, the scientific achievements that rival Silicon Valley. I well understand the force of their arguments about the lack of a credible negotiating partner who can deliver, the Palestinians’ peddling of illusions about the possibility of a right of return, their fomenting of hatred against Israel among the younger generation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, said, by textbooks and other means, the existential threat to Israel and their concentration on security which follows.
However, Israel has never been in such a dominant position militarily in the region nor perhaps internationally, given their warm relations with Russia and the USA and with several Arab states, particularly in the Gulf. As Israel faces the long-term problems of demography and water supply, now may be the time for some calibrated concessions. Is there no hope of progress? Must we await some cataclysmic event to clear minds? Surely there are some signs of hope in the change of view by Arab states. Who can forget, in 1967, the Khartoum agreement of the “three noes”, and the way in which several Arab states now respond fairly warmly to Israel—Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states—a sea change of considerable importance?
Trump appears to believe that money—some might say bribes—can be decisive. Of course, money can help, but more fundamental are questions of identity. Solomon would surely have avoided a big bang and sought to enlarge islands of co-operation, as my noble friend Lord Stone and his colleagues tried to do. Such might, indeed, happen when a new US Administration takes a more balanced approach, with the emergence of a more realistic generation of Palestinians discarding the unrealistic rhetoric of their fathers, or when this dynamic Israeli society of 9 million people is prepared to look long and seek partnerships, not a humiliating domination of the Palestinians.
It is time for the Palestinians and their supporters to accept that the international community will not deliver all that they want. Likewise, supporters of Israel will not get all that they want and desire. It is time for the Palestinians to move on from—I will not disappoint the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, by not quoting this—the dogma of Yasser Arafat, who, as a former Israeli Foreign Minister said and as the noble Baroness reminded us, never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity.
It is time also for supporters of the Palestinians to accept that the Jewish populations of the Arab states have fled, as the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, referred to. Can anyone name Arab states where Jews can live freely, if at all? I will give just one example among many in the short time that we are allowed. A century ago when the British—yes, we British again—invaded the country then known as Mesopotamia, one-third of Baghdad’s 200,000-strong population was Jewish. That city has recently recorded only five Jewish people remaining, and I think that they have probably gone as well by now. This is the picture across the region. More than 800,000 Jews fled from Arab lands, mostly ending up as citizens of Israel, while in the West the Holocaust and the growth of anti-Semitism led to much-increased immigration from countries such as France. The noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, recently asked Her Majesty’s Government in a Written Question
“what assessment they have made of any correlation between the actions of the government of Israel and antisemitic incidents in the UK.”
The truth is that anti-Semitism in the UK and elsewhere existed long before the emergence of the state of Israel. The lies about Jews and their supposed control is not new. You can go back to theProtocols of the Elders of Zion, a tsarist forgery published before Israel was even a tear in Theodor Herzl’s eye.
So linking the two or saying that the victim is responsible is absolutely wrong. But let us all agree, hopefully, in this House, that what we aim for is a two-state solution with Israel having secure borders, not impossible borders, and the Palestinians having control over their own destiny in their own state, so that they and Israel can live as two states within the nations of the world.