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Terrorism (Foreign Policy Aspects)

I welcome this opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee on opening the debate. He was not present when we drafted the report, which must have made what is already a difficult task more difficult. All my colleagues on the Committee have pointed out something that remains obvious to all of us involved in the continuing struggle and debate on how we can secure a peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. In whatever Arab or Muslim country that we visit, and we have been to many, one thing rises above everything else in the minds of those to whom we speak—all our interlocutors, whoever they may be: that there must be a just and peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. As other hon. Members have said, after last week's visit to Israel and the occupied territories, that peace seems as elusive—perhaps more so—than ever. I was one of the Committee members who visited Saudi Arabia and the Gulf last week. Not being content with visiting only those regions, I went to Israel the previous week, at my own expense, to meet a constituent—a holocaust survivor who lives in Leeds. As a child, he was taken from Lodz ghetto in Poland to various concentration camps before being released at the age of 16 at Teresenstadt in May 1945. That man, Arek Hersh, went back to the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau for the first time last year. Yorkshire Television recently made a documentary about him. He had a room at the Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem dedicated to him for the work that he does to bring the holocaust into sharp focus for the younger generations who simply have no recollection of it. Arek Hersh has done a brilliant job and he was being honoured at Yad Vashem. I wanted to be with him. Of course, like most politicians, it is not good enough to simply be with a constituent, however far away. I have a long-standing and continuing interest in the future of Israel, and of the Palestinian people. Therefore, I made it my business to meet people with whom I could discuss current issues. I met very different people to those whom my colleagues met last week, and I came away with a slightly more optimistic view, although I am, of course, a realist. The founders of the state of Israel had high ideals and one has to go back only 30 years to remember the Israel of Golda Meir, of David Ben Gurion, and of the kibbutzim to which so many students of my generation—whether Jewish or not—went during their summer vacations from university or after leaving school. Many still stand for the high ideals on which the state was founded, but not the majority, clearly. Two weeks ago in Israel, I learned that the seismic shift taking place in politics could, if one is optimistic, and with a fair wind, have a beneficial effect. I am not trying to contradict anything that my colleagues have said. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) said something on which we both agree, namely the effect of the wall that has been built to keep out terrorists and suicide bombers. The barrier has, largely, achieved that aim, although there was an attack just the other day in Netanya, a place to which many British people emigrate and where many of my former Leeds constituents now live. It is clear that the wall is not sufficient and I agree with my hon. Friend that the wall is a blemish on the Israeli state. I understand why it has been built, but I am horrified every time I see it. We must be clear that the barrier takes the form of a wall around Jerusalem and Qalqilia, which we visited two years ago, but it is, in most parts, a fence and, in most places, it is on the green line. It is significant and it says much about the state of Israel that, just last year, the path of the barrier had to be altered because former members of the Israeli defence forces took their Government to the Israeli supreme court to have that path moved around the eastern part of Jerusalem. That is significant because the rule of law and the legal system was able to change a policy that would disastrously affect Palestinian farmers such as the one whom we met in Qalqilia, to whom my hon. Friend referred. Those people are honestly trying to farm their own land and are being cut off from the land between the village where they live and the land that they farm by the barrier. They are then taking several hours to get across the border simply to go to work and try to earn a living. I met a number of interesting people while I was briefly in Israel. It was not the intense Foreign Affairs Committee visit with which we on the Committee are familiar. It did not involve meetings from 7 am until very late at night, but I had the chance to talk to some of our diplomats: Simon McDonald, our ambassador in Israel, whom many of us know well, gave me a long and full briefing over lunch in Tel Aviv; and Dr John Jenkins, our expert in East Jerusalem, who has the important job of trying to look after Arab and Palestinian interests on behalf of the British Government. Both those diplomats are experts in their field and can make a important contribution to what should be a road map to peace, but seems to be a road map away from peace—in fact, towards anything but peace. So how do we move back towards a lasting settlement between Israel and the Palestinians? We all agree that the only future for Israel is a vibrant, democratic Palestine. That two-states solution, to which my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Committee referred, is something that both he and I and many others have espoused for many years, and want to see achieved. Can it be achieved? What will the clear favourite to win the election in March next year, Ariel Sharon, a man for whom I have absolutely no time—he destroyed many of the moves that his predecessor, Ehud Barak, tried to make towards a lasting settlement—bring to Israeli politics and more importantly, to that elusive peace process if his Kadima party, the Forward party, wins the largest number of seats? Even more important than that answer is what the Labour party can do. Is it genuinely newly invigorated by the surprise election of Amir Peretz, and the coalescence of the progressive peace forces around the Labour party? It is very much old Labour, not new Labour. Will Peretz win sufficient seats to be pivotal and to have sufficient influence on Ariel Sharon? I am afraid that we shall have to wait for the election outcome to see. The early indications, according to The Jerusalem Post, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn pointed out, are that Sharon looks set to win. However, Israeli politics are notoriously unpredictable: the Labour party, or another, could achieve a larger number of seats. We will have to wait to see the outcome. One thing is for sure, however. The Likud party, the former party of Prime Minister Sharon, is divided. The bid for that party's leadership by the former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be, in my opinion, the greatest danger posed towards any possibility of peace. Those of us who have heard Netanyahu in the House and elsewhere, and those of who met him in Israel when he was Prime Minister, will know that he is a man who stands for the concept of ““eretz Yisrael””—a greater Israel—that conforms not to our notions of the green line and the 1967 borders, but to a notion of Israel according to the Old Testament, which excludes all Arabs and Palestinians and does not acknowledge their existence at all. That can only be truly dangerous for Israel's future and that of the Palestinian people. I agree wholeheartedly that the poverty, oppression and day-to-day barriers put in the way of law-abiding Palestinian people will only turn them away from peace, conformity to the law, and an attempt to try to earn a living for themselves. That is increasingly impossible, now that they are going to be excluded from working in Israel itself. However, we must have hope—hope in adversity, as seems clear at present, certainly from the findings of my hon. Friends who were in Israel last week. A situation such as that can never be deemed to be hopeless. One of the factors that may make a difference is the role that diplomacy plays. Mention has been made of the role of the Quartet. When I met Ghassan Khatib, the Minister of Economic Planning—I know my colleagues also met him—I had one hour. He came to the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem where I was staying and we discussed whether there was any hope for lasting peace or a settlement. He is a member of Fatah, of course, and was hopeful that the recent intervention of Condoleezza Rice and the role of the Quartet led by Jim Wolfensohn was a different factor that might make a difference. I hope that the Government will make a plea to the United States to tell them that, if they put their minds to it, they and only they can have a powerful influence on Israel, whoever is elected to Government, to get back on track with the road map and round the table for genuine negotiation. We all know, as do they, that negotiation with a partner is the only road to a lasting peace. The imposition of peace, however unilateral or well meaning, can mean nothing unless the partner is a true partner and will sit down and negotiate properly on equal terms. I mentioned the role of diplomacy. We are fortunate to have good diplomats in the region; I have mentioned two. We also went to Saudi Arabia. We have there a diplomat who is working for the interests of this country, was the ambassador to Israel and still, even after two years, has a strong reputation: Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. I am told that, now that he is our ambassador to Saudi Arabia, he is often summoned to update King Abdullah on the state of Israeli politics. As our former ambassador in Israel, he has many friends there and keeps up with the day-to-day developments. That can only be beneficial to us. I want finally to mention the importance of Iran in our war against terror. The Iranians are trying to develop, we think, enriched uranium and plutonium for military grade weapons. It is important that we ensure that that development does not take place. Of course, the Iranians are entitled to civil and peaceful nuclear power, as they claim. It is important that the deal with the Russians to ensure that that enrichment cannot take place goes ahead and that pressure from the Government and those of Germany and France, as well as from Javier Solana on behalf of the EU, is successful. In the end, dialogue and constructive engagement will ensure that countries such as Iran do not develop such weaponry. It is in the interests of everybody in the world, not just the region, that we ensure that they do not.