---

International Affairs

Let us set aside the morality of the situation—the wanton slaughter of hundreds of innocent Lebanese and the destruction of their infrastructure, the havoc caused by the Israeli army in Gaza and the kidnapping of half of the Palestinian Government, the murder of innocent Israelis and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Let us accept as a given that Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organisations, and that the Israeli Government are dominated by right-wing thugs—unfortunately now augmented by the former peacenik leader of the Labour party who is in charge of the attacks on Lebanon. Let us look instead at the undeniable facts. This is Israel’s fourth invasion of Lebanon, and none of the three previous invasions has been successful. The 1978 invasion was called Operation Peace in Galilee: is Galilee at peace today? The commander, Rafael Eitan, described the Litani Operation by saying, ““We come, we kill, we go.”” It did not achieve its objective. In 1982 I was with Israeli troops after they had invaded Lebanon. It was the first time that I had ever seen Israeli soldiers who were scared of the enemy—and I have been with Israeli soldiers from 1967 onwards. That war caused Sharon’s resignation and Begin’s resignation. It did not work, and this war will not work either. Already, Israeli troops are taking serious casualties on the ground and their commanders are warning that they cannot go on in this way. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is not simply immoral; it is futile. At the same time, Israel is facing an existential threat. A once-proud nation of pioneers and warriors who proclaimed that Jews would never again be confined in ghettos is now building an illegal wall behind which its people are cowering in a Jewish Israeli-made do-it-yourself ghetto. That is what is happening to Israel now. Within a measurable period, Palestinians will outnumber Israelis. Unless there is a two-state solution, with two countries—one for the Palestinians—the Palestinians will be penned into bantustans directly adjacent to affluent illegal Jewish settlements. As in South Africa, this will become unviable for the Israeli state and the whole future of Israel as a viable state will be thrown into doubt. The only way of saving Israel—do not let us talk about the Palestinian interests, although I have championed them for many years—is a two-state solution. Hezbollah and Hamas set out to cause chaos. That is what they are about, and they are achieving it. The Israeli Government and the United States Government are obliging Hamas and Hezbollah in the way they are approaching the situation. They are playing with fire. If Syria and Iran are drawn into the conflict, global repercussions will burgeon out of control, with an incalculable economic impact for the whole of the western developed world far worse than the oil shock of 1973, which, among other things, brought down the Heath Government. Remember what happened to Jimmy Carter. He was brought down by Iran as President of the United States. Remember, too, that western meddling in the middle east ends again and again in tears. We are just commemorating the 50th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Suez by Britain and France in collusion with Israel. There is a story of a scorpion approaching a frog on the banks of the River Jordan. The scorpion says to the frog, ““Will you give me a ride on your back across the river?”” The frog says, ““Don’t be foolish, you will sting me and I will die.”” The scorpion says to the frog, ““Don’t you be foolish. If I sting you I will drown. That goes against all kinds of sense.”” So the frog says to the scorpion, ““Get on my back.”” Half way across the river the scorpion stings the frog. The frog says, ““What have you done? Now I will die and you will drown.”” The scorpion says, ““This is the middle east.”” What we are seeing is futility on all sides in this conflict. Those of us like me who have championed the state of Israel from before its foundation are filled with tears and shame at what an Israeli Government are doing to the Jewish people of Israel. I have championed a Palestinian state since my first meetings with Yasser Arafat in Tunis. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) that Arafat made a profound error in rejecting the Barak offer at Camp David, but there is no point in repining. There is no point in saying that things should have been done differently. When I first visited Syria, I had a meeting with the vice-president in which he spent 40 minutes talking about the iniquities of the Zionists since the Balfour declaration. When he had finished, I said, ““Yes, let’s take all that for granted, but that was then. What about today and what about tomorrow?”” Our British Government have a role to play in trying to drill sense into the Israeli Government and in trying to explain to the Palestinian people that their best interests are not those championed by Hamas. But let us be clear: America invaded Iraq—so we are told—to bring democracy to the middle east, to get genuine elections. The Palestinians held a genuine election, so are we saying that the only acceptable genuine elections in the middle east are those whose result is acceptable to George W. Bush? If so, there will be few successful acceptable democratic elections in the middle east. I am more pessimistic about this situation than I have been in more than 40 years of involvement in the middle east. I do not believe that it helps the Israelis to give them a free hand. The duty of my right hon. Friends in the British Government, whom I have constantly supported and will continue to support, is to make it clear to the Israelis and to the Palestinians that compromise is essential. That is what I told Arafat when I first met him and I said it to him again and again. Letting the Israeli dogs of war loose on Lebanon will solve nothing. It will undermine the existence of the state of Israel, it will kill more and more Israelis and the poor Palestinians at the bottom will continue to suffer. I look to our Government to try to do something to help us out of that mess.