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Israel (War against Terror)

My hon. Friend raises an important point. In this debate, I am talking about things that have actually happened and clear evidence of Hezbollah involvement; I do not wish to speculate on future events. However, I know that the view that he just expressed is very widely held by military and intelligence experts in the west. I thank him for that helpful intervention. In April, it emerged that Iran has some 40,000 suicide bombers poised to strike at Britain and elsewhere. Dr. Hassan Abbasi, the head of the Centre for Doctrinal Strategic Studies in the Revolutionary Guards, has warned would-be martyrs to"““pay close attention to wily England””" and vowed that"““Britain’s demise is on our agenda.””" The Iranian regime is a major threat to international peace and security. A fundamentalist regime hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons is a threat to the west because it would grant the terror network, including al-Qaeda, a nuclear umbrella and allow Iran to increase its support for global terrorism. While the UN Security Council grapples with the Iranian nuclear issue, Iran threatens Britain, the United States and Israel. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened Israel with annihilation, denied the existence of the holocaust, and continues to incite anti-Semitism worldwide. We in Britain must recognise that the threats issued by Iran are not empty and that they are directed not only against Israel, but directly against us in the west. Innocent British lives will be at risk if we fail to combat that brand of international terrorism. What is the difference between Iranian extremists promising to send suicide bombers to Britain and Iranian-funded Palestinian terrorists blowing up innocent civilians in Tel Aviv? One of the most striking examples of the links between terrorism in Britain and that in Israel came in 2003. With direction from Hamas, two British-born Muslim suicide bombers—Asif Hanif, from London, and Omar Khan Sharif, from Derby—attacked Mike’s Place, a popular British bar in Tel Aviv, killing three Israelis and wounding 60 others. The media, including the BBC, use moral equivalence to compare Israeli reactions to terror attacks with the attacks themselves. However, let us be perfectly clear: there is no moral equivalence between a terrorist who blows up a bus, hotel, marketplace or ice cream parlour and a response by a democratic state to find and root out those terrorists. I have considerable sympathy with those British troops serving in Northern Ireland during the troubles who were vilified for ““overreacting”” in the face of terrorist violence. It is only too easy for armchair commentators and politicians to criticise soldiers from either country, on the ground, defending us. Make no mistake—the terrorist organisations in the west bank and Gaza are willing tools of the wider causes of Islamic jihad. Not only is Hezbollah training and financing Palestinian terrorist organisations such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas, but, as confirmed by the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen, in those territories, there are now terrorist cells that have been recruited and funded by al-Qaeda networks operating from Israel’s near neighbours, Jordan and, yes, Egypt too. I recognise that there has been suffering on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; many innocent lives have been lost. As our Prime Minister says, the only resolution of this conflict will be a two-state solution, reached through negotiation and a complete end to terrorism: a viable Palestinian state that lives side by side with a secure Israel.