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International Affairs

I begin by saying that I speak as a friend of Israel and a friend to the Palestinians. There are many things that I would like to say, but I will restrict myself to one set of comments. The crisis in the middle east is a tremendous challenge to the international community, and I fear that we will not rise to it. We have not risen to it up to now. We have allowed a situation to continue to develop in the middle east that generates a huge amount of trouble, not only for those in the middle east but for those in the streets of London, those who travel on the buses in London and those who travel on the tube—my constituents. We need to be able to resolve the issue of the middle east because it continues to a generate a feeling of enormous resentment and of justification for the sort of terrorism that we are now suffering across the world. If we cannot, as an international community, develop international organisations that can resolve such situations, where are we heading? How can we just stand on the sidelines and say, ““The neo-cons are dominating American foreign policy, and therefore we have to behave as though we have been cut off at the knees, and we can do nothing about it,””? How can it be that so little is done about the continuing open sore that is Palestine at the moment? How can the Israelis be allowed to build walls on Palestinian land and the road map be allowed simply to drift? How can that be? Now we see the bombing that is taking place across the middle east and the terrible suffering of civilians, and we seem to be able to do nothing. We must do something. We must rise to the challenge. We must work together as a whole community, because the world is small and getting smaller. It is our duty to play our part and to be brave, to speak to our friends and to ensure that we behave responsibly.