Occupied Palestinian
Territories
5
July 2007
John Barrett (Edinburgh, West) (LD): I am pleased to be called
to speak today, and to see you in the Chair, Mr. Bercow.
As a member of the Select Committee, you have taken a great
interest in its work over many years. I congratulate the
Minister as well on his new appointment. I am glad to see
him as part of an expanded team responsible for one of
the most important Departments of State.
I served on the Select Committee for five years, until just
after the report was produced, and I have noticed great changes
in that Committee. One of its members, alongside whom I served,
has sadly passed away. One has been promoted to Government
office, and one has defected from the Conservative party
to the Labour party. The Committee not only produces effective
reports; it gets up to a lot of other things as well. As
I have said, the report was one of the last that I was involved
in preparing, and although events have moved on considerably
since it was published, it is still useful in outlining the
immense challenges that we face. As the hon. Member for Birmingham,
Northfield (Richard Burden) mentioned, the Government response
was disappointing. However, I shall, I hope, touch on that
aspect of the matter later.
In the face of much misery in the
region—we saw a
lot of that during the Select Committee visit—there
is some hope. The release of Alan Johnston earlier this week
proves that we should never give up hope. In the future,
when we see former Prime Minister Blair as a middle east
envoy, I hope we will wish him, and anyone who is working
towards peace in the region, well.
However, we are all aware of the former
Prime Minister’s
role in the past 10 years, and his special friendship with
the US Government. I for one am left wondering what he can
do that he has not tried already. Will he be a force for
good, or will his presence be a red rag to a bull? US and
UK foreign policy in the region has not added much to its
stability in recent years.
The ultimate solution must be the two-state solution, to
which the UK Government have repeatedly stated their commitment.
In time, the new Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary will
presumably, like their predecessors, confirm that that is
still the case: that is at the heart of the report. However,
that solution cannot happen if one state is non-viable. At
the moment, Israeli occupation of the west bank is making
it impossible. If the Palestinians have their own state,
it is increasingly likely that Palestine will be a failed
state before it has a chance to grow.
The facts on the ground are incontrovertible.
GDP is in decline. More than 1.3 million Palestinians are
still living below the poverty line. Food insecurity rose
by 13 per cent. during 2006, and between 25 June and 12
October 2006, 261 Gazans died—60 of them children—following
Israeli air strikes in retaliation for rocket attacks.
That is more than 10 times more than during the same period
in 2005. During the same period, two Israelis were killed
and 15 were injured by home-made rockets fired out of the
Gaza strip. The number of checkpoints and road blocks,
many of which the visiting members of the Select Committee
saw during their visit, has increased by 40 per cent. during
2006, and more than half of the 700 km-long barrier route
has been constructed, despite the advisory opinion of the
International Court of Justice, which declared the route
to be in contravention of international law.
The facts of what is happening on the ground, many of which
are detailed in the report and were seen by members of the
Select Committee, show the difficulties that exist. Back-to-back
transfers of goods at checkpoints have resulted in the destruction
of fresh produce. The Select Committee Chairman, my right
hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) referred
to those problems and the fact that checkpoints, the barrier
wall and the lack of aid getting through were destroying
not only the day-to-day existence of men, women and children,
but business life. That business life must develop if development
assistance to the territories is to be reduced in future.
As has been mentioned already, Israel’s withholding
of the Palestinian Authority’s revenues and the withdrawal
of budgetary assistance have come to an end, and the Israeli
Government have agreed to release some of the funds to the
authority. However, I do not believe that the international
community put sufficient pressure on the Israeli Government
to do that earlier. The freezing of funds, coupled with the
western economic boycott, had crippled the Palestinian Authority,
depriving key workers of pay.
The key problem throughout has been
the use of aid as a political tool; that does not work.
It would be easier to understand Israel’s withholding
of such aid for political reasons if there were a track
record of such action yielding political results. In reality,
the withholding of aid has only worsened the situation
in the west bank and increased feelings of distrust among
many Palestinian people. The temporary international mechanism
has been established, and perhaps the Minister will be able
to tell us how that is developing now and what is happening.
Practical programmes to combat poverty
in the Palestinian community are desperately needed, but
we have a ridiculous situation in which some projects funded
by UK and EU taxpayers are being blown up by the Israeli
Government. When I was last in Palestine, I saw the remains
of a bombed Palestinian police station, which was full
of computers supplied by the UK Government—the UK taxpayer—to
help to combat crime. One reason given to us for the attack,
at the time, was that it was to deal with an unknown terrorist:
to kill a terrorist who was being held at that police station.
He fled when the building collapsed. Such contradictions
are commonplace there.
Aid alone, however, will not solve
the problem. In the report and in the Government’s response, it emerges that Palestinians
are the most aided people on the planet. If aid solved problems,
we should not be having today’s debate. We need real
moves forward to make Palestine a viable place for inward
investment, trade and economic development. On paper, the
occupied territories enjoy a liberal market and trading regime;
in reality, both internal economic activity and external
trade are hugely disrupted every day. Encouraging words are
useless unless they are backed by action. That leads me to
the double standards applied in our treatment of Israel and
Palestine.
Although severe pressure, including
the withdrawal of humanitarian assistance, has been placed
on Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, no comparable pressure
has been put on Israel to meet its obligations under international
treaties. The Government point out in their response to
the Select Committee’s
report that the Quartet is asking nothing more than the renunciation
of violence and recognition of Israel’s right to exist.
I accept that, but I argue that what each side does is more
important than what people say. That very point was confirmed
in an exchange, during a Select Committee evidence session,
between the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield and a
Mr. Gooderham. He was asked:
“So the theory is more important
than the practice. That is what you are saying?”
Mr. Gooderham replied:
“I think it is, yes. I think
so long as you have an organisation that is committed to
violent means to achieve its political ends, then, yes.”
The final comment from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield
was:
“So you withdraw aid to the
Palestinians because theoretically Hamas is committed to
violence, even though they are not actually committing
violence, but you do not do anything to Israel if they
are theoretically in favour of the Roadmap, even if they
are not abiding by their obligations under it?”
The reply was yes: and that is what is
happening on the ground. Hamas may regularly state its desire
to wipe Israel off the map, but it is in no position to do
so. Israel, on the other hand, does not explicitly call for
the destruction of Palestine and often talks a good talk.
Yet its wall-building programme, the theft, I would say,
of natural resources, and the expansion of settlements amount
to doing that by stealth.
I should like the Quartet to focus less
on what is said and more on what is done by both sides. Israeli
policy on settlements and the building of the wall are dividing
the country and enforcing an effective apartheid on the Palestinian
people. The details of the construction of settlements in
map 1 in the report show, as well as access roads, razor
wire, the domination of demand on water supplies and the
strategic location of the settlements on hilltops. Those
developments are the actions of a regime that has ended all
hope for many Palestinians that the west bank will ever become
their homeland in a meaningful way, unless those settlements
are removed.
Many of the report’s recommendations
are identical to those made back in 2004. That shows the
absolute lack of any positive movement, despite a number
of token gestures. Although it is important that the international
community puts appropriate pressure on Hamas to change
its position and renounce violence, that is better done
through dialogue, rather than using isolation and intimidation.
We only have to look to Ireland to see the importance of
getting rival factions round the negotiating table. Much
has been made of the part that the former Prime Minister
played in the resolution of the long-running problems in
Northern Ireland, but we must remember the role of those
leaders who were prepared to get round the negotiating table
with people they clearly despised.
John Battle: This is an important
matter—we are discussing
the politics of the situation and the difficulty of having
dialogue with people who use violence—but the hon.
Gentleman and all of us may recall that the business of getting
people to move away from violence and to get round a table
and have dialogue is incredibly complex, difficult and takes
place by stages. That does not always mean handing over guns
immediately, but may involve intermediaries to negotiate
that difficult process over a long period. That does not
pre-empt the possibility of dialogue.
John Barrett: The right hon. Gentleman
makes an important point. The process is long drawn out.
It has taken many years to get to the present stage, and
clearly it will be many years before anything like a solution
is found, but steps along the way—even small steps—are
important.
In the end, if development assistance
to the occupied territories becomes a thing of the past—that is what we all want—and
there is peace in the region, the economy can again grow
and support those who live there. We will get there only
if there is leadership on all sides, with leaders who are
prepared to negotiate without resorting to violence and leaders
who show that they have a vision for a peaceful future. Let
us hope that, if there is another such report from the Select
Committee in three years, we will have moved on further than
during the past three years.
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