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Terrorism (Foreign Policy Aspects)

Like the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), I welcome the opportunity to debate the report, which I hope the House found helpful. We members of the Committee believe that it is an important and significant report, which we published as Parliament was about to be dissolved for the general election. I intend to focus on two issues, both of which were extensively covered in the report—first, the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and secondly, the all-important issue of Israel and Palestine. Starting with the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, I confess to some reluctance to having to quote from the Prime Minister's speech on 18 March 2003, which is now somewhat discredited. It was the speech that he made to persuade the House of Commons to agree to the invasion of Iraq. However, a section of it was profoundly important, although it was used in a wholly incorrect context as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. The Prime Minister referred to two key threats—weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. He made the key point that if those two threats should come together, the seriousness for all countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, would be great. He said:"““The possibility of the two coming together—of terrorist groups in possession of weapons of mass destruction or even of a so-called dirty radiological bomb—is now, in my judgment, a real and present danger to Britain and to its national security.””—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol.401, c. 768.]" The Prime Minister referred to what he said as a possibility, which now, nearly three years later, has become a reality. There is little doubt, judging from comments made by senior police officers, that it is not a matter of if but when there is some form of attempted WMD attack on the United Kingdom and other countries. In addition to what has appeared from public sources, it seems to me that we are now into the reality of an era when terrorist groups, as yet unknown and unidentified to security agencies around the world, are working in unknown locations and seeking to put together some form of weapon of mass destruction. The hon. Member for Ilford, South spoke about the importance of the internet. I wholly agree with him. I was certainly struck by the report that appeared in The Sunday Times on 6 November, which stated:"““An Al-Qaeda website containing detailed instructions in Arabic on how to make nuclear, ‘dirty' and biological bombs has attracted more than 57,000 hits and hundreds of readers' inquiries.””" The article continued:"““The manual, posted on October 6 on a forum titled Al-Firdaws, or Paradise, contains 80 pages of instructions and pictures of kitchen bomb-making techniques.””" The report then referred to comments made by Mr. John Hassard, a physicist at Imperial College, London, who was quoted as saying:"““Normally you just get generic principles, but this appears to be more like a proper instruction manual””." The seriousness of what is available on the internet cannot be underestimated. As well as what is available on the internet, we say in our report that we are all too familiar with the fact that ready-made WMD are already available throughout the world, not least in Russia, where huge quantities remain of the former Soviet stockpile. We refer to the stockpile in Schuch'ye in Russia, where nearly 2 million active chemical shells are apparently stacked together on wooden racks. They contain sarin, soman and VX, and they are held under what has to be described as somewhat questionable security. That is the biggest chemical weapons stockpile in the world—there are something like 40,000 tonnes of chemical agent—yet a minute fraction of that represents a fatal dose. It can be said with certainty that if by any appalling chance a terrorist group was able to release a weapon of mass destruction, the casualty toll would utterly and totally dwarf any terrorist attack that used conventional devices. It would totally dwarf the casualty toll of 9/11 and probably dwarf the casualty toll of the worst natural disasters that the world has experienced. I shall not mince my words. Many victims will suffer an extremely painful death and some will suffer an extremely protracted death. That is the reality of what we face. Having reread the Government's response on that issue, I put it to the Minister that there cannot be a more serious and significant element to the Government's security and defence policy than the protection of the people of this country against some form of WMD attack by terrorists. That must be their single greatest priority. I worry and I am truly concerned as to whether the Government are giving sufficient priority to resources and planning. Are they making available sufficient finance and the necessary training to give the intelligence services the human resources to deal with the problem? Are they making sufficient money available to provide us with the technical resources to anticipate and pre-empt the problem, and are they doing sufficient to galvanise other countries into playing a more proactive role before the worst happens? The issue needs to go substantially up the Government's priority list, and I urge the Minister to do that. I come now to Israel and Palestine. I do not believe that if the Israeli-Palestine conflict were settled tomorrow that would be the end of militant Islamic terrorism. Regrettably, a small minority are happy to use the Israel-Palestine position as a justification for terrorism that is totally spurious, because nothing ever justifies terrorism. I believe that if there was a final status settlement tomorrow, some would continue their baleful and appalling efforts to destroy people not merely in the non-Muslim world but in the Muslim world that is representative of regimes or traditions with which they are in disagreement. However, if we could achieve a settlement in the Israeli-Palestine conflict, it would at least remove from millions of people their sense of grievance and their feeling that there was something on which they had to take a vengeful attitude towards the non-Muslim world. The Government appear to be dealing with policies of illusion when dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian position, and not with the realities on the ground that we had the benefit of seeing last week. Those policies are to establish an independent Palestinian state and to produce a final settlement, which would have to be equally and fairly negotiated. We spoke to many people in Israel and Palestine, and I take exactly the same view as the hon. Member for Ilford, South. With one exception, not one of those to whom I spoke—not only Palestinians but Israelis—held out any prospect of an agreed final status settlement. Unanimously, apart from that one exception, they said that all that would happen would be the unilateral imposition of a settlement on the Palestinians by the Israelis. The exception was a professor in conflict management, an Israeli gentleman of a particular dogmatic view. He said that there could be a final settlement, but in a generation's time— 30 years. When the Government talk bravely about being on track on the road map and moving towards a final status agreement, that is out of synchronisation with anything and everything that we heard in Israel and Palestine last week. We are not even on the road map as far as the political negotiations are concerned. We are merely on a continuation of the unilateral settlement policy, the imposition of a settlement by the Israelis on the Palestinians. That will be a settlement, as the hon. Member for Ilford, South indicated, which incorporates East Jerusalem into the state of Israel, which runs broadly down the line of the wall and separation barrier, and which brings about a substantial de facto annexation of a significant area of the west bank including key water resources. The second policy of illusion that I believe that the Government are dealing with concerns the second leg of the policy commitment, which is not merely to create a two-state solution and an independent Palestinian state but to create a viable Palestinian state. Are we on the road to a viable Palestinian state? On all the evidence last week, we are moving further and further away from the possibility of the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. What are the criteria for a viable state? First, a state has to have a capital. Of course, capitals can be created on greenfield sites, but that will not be accepted in that part of the world. Every Palestinian man, woman and child will say that what is absolutely non-negotiable under any circumstances is having East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state. East Jerusalem of course contains within it the third most important mosque in the Muslim world after Medina and Mecca. It is desirable for an independent and viable state to have a contiguous boundary. That did not happen with East and West Pakistan, but it does happen with most other countries around the world. That is not a geographical possibility with Palestine, because it is of course separated between Gaza and the west bank. The discussions on the connection between Gaza and the west bank are therefore all-important. We had a fascinating and revealing briefing from the Wolfensohn team, which was charged with the feasibility study report to the Quartet on the issue of the connection between Gaza and the west bank. They told us that the Israelis wanted the connection to be solely by rail—a very limited form of connection, which is clearly profoundly unsatisfactory to the Palestinians. The Palestinians want the connection to be by road, which is clearly critical to the viability of a new Palestinian state. And, incredibly—we heard this with disbelief—the Israelis asked for a third option to be considered, which is a road tunnel between Gaza and the west bank, under the state of Israel. It would be the longest road tunnel in the world, if it were built, and would be constructed at fantastic cost. Its aim, presumably, would be to try to keep the Palestinians from travelling on the surface of the Israeli state. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us in his reply that the British Government will have no truck with the proposal for the only connection between Gaza and the west bank to be by tunnel. I hope that they will press for a road. In addition to the issue of the contiguous boundary, there is the open question of whether the Israelis' long-term ambition will keep the west bank as a single, contiguous entity. The hon. Member for Ilford, South discounted the possibility of any part of the west bank that is to the east of the barrier and the wall being incorporated at a future point into the state of Israel. I would not wholly rule that out, because there are two land fingers that now point eastwards across the west bank—the Ariel finger and the Ma'ale Adumim finger—and some believe that the long-term plans are to move those fingers still further eastwards, possibly right across to the Jordanian border, which would provide a division of the west bank itself. The final, crucial requirement is that the Palestinian state is economically viable. The degree of disruption to the lives of individuals and those who are trying to generate income, employment and business opportunities on the west bank has to be seen to be believed. I will not, Sir Nicholas, wave it around now, but I have the United Nations map which shows the position in August. It shows that throughout the west bank there is a combination of permanently manned checkpoints, partially manned checkpoints, gates through the barrier that are manned by soldiers and roads closed with concrete blocks, earth mounds, earth walls or trenches. The map shows every single one. How many were there? There were 376 checkpoints and closures on the west bank in August 2005 in a pocket-sized territorial area. What an impediment to anyone trying to run a business. How can people run a business when they cannot be certain when their employees will arrive at work? We heard from the British Council that at one point staff were having to go on donkeys through back routes to get to the British Council offices in Ramallah. How can people run an efficient business if, when they export goods to Israel, at the freight crossings they must solemnly take every single item out of their Palestinian number-plated lorry and transfer them by forklift truck into an Israeli number-plated lorry because only Israeli number-plated lorries can go into Israel? How can people farm viably when their village is separated, as we saw in Jayyus, by the barrier from the land they are trying to farm and they cannot be certain whether they will get through and whether their goods will be held up at the barrier in turn?How can people do anything when their lives are ruled by whether they can get permits such as permits to visit their town, permits to visit Gaza, East Jerusalem or the west bank and even, for farmers, permits to go on their own land. We were told by the Jayyus farming community that some farmers had been refused permits. As a result, unbelievably, of the application of old Turkish law, coupled with, we were horrified to hear, old British mandate law, if an area is not farmed for a period it can be automatically confiscated into the state of Israel. That is the way in which the viability of the Palestinian state is week by week, month by month, year by year being set backwards and possibly made a hopeless task. This is all done in the name of security. That security justification is in part valid. Israel faces a continuing appalling threat from suicide bombers. We saw yet another suicide bomb attack just a couple of days ago. The security justification only washes in part. Anyone who has seen the barrier on the ground will know that the line of the barrier is so wide that the only logic of the barrier is to create further land for expansion of the existing settlements. The Government have to deal with the realities of what is happening on the west bank and in Gaza. I do not believe that they have begun to do so. The prospect of a road map settlement is diminishing. The well-nigh certainty of unilateral annexation is increasing and the prospect of a viable Palestinian state is diminishing by the week, month and year.