---

Debate on the Address

My Lords, of the Government’s many policy commitments in the gracious Speech, I welcomed particularly the final one: that the Government, "““will maintain Britain’s strong commitment to reaching a lasting peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians””." I was in the Middle East some six weeks ago on an official visit, during which I met Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah. I saw not for the first time stretches of the security fence and visited Sderot, the town which has been showered with rockets from Gaza. Some 800 Qassem rockets were fired between June and September this year, compared with 500 in the same period last year. It is worrying that a Katyusha rocket, with a range of 20 kilometres, which is almost double that of a Qassem, has now been fired. Anyone who handles a Qassem rocket, as I did, will see that it is basically simply a length of any kind of piping. The rockets have grown in sophistication, as anyone can see from the samples collected in the police station in Sderot. The alarm goes off as a Qassem is launched, and the people of Sderot have less than a minute to take evasive action. One does not know where the rocket will fall, nor does the launcher. I spoke with mothers in Sderot who were protesting against their Government because of a lack of adequate shelters for schools. They consider that the best shelters are built around and over the existing school buildings to provide a protective shell. They want more shelters, but they also want the IDF to take Gaza again, which I hope will not happen. However, if there is no lessening in the number of rocket attacks, one wonders how long any democratically elected Government can resist the pressure to take some military action. One can only too well understand what Israeli deputy foreign Minister Majalli Whbee, a Druze Member of the Knesset, said to some of us on his recent visit to London; that is, that he can no longer look those people in the eyes, since he had argued with them that Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and removal of the settlements was a price worth paying for the peace that it would bring. I first visited Gaza in August 1967. Israelis had been there only a matter of weeks. It was a hell hole, a vast prison. It had been under Egyptian control, and Egypt would not allow Palestinians into Egypt proper without a special permit, so the Palestinians had been in Gaza since 1948. The Palestinian refugee camps of Gaza, Jordan—now the West Bank—and Lebanon are stains on the world’s conscience; but they are a stain above all on the conscience of those Arab Governments whose purposes it has suited to use the Palestinians for their own political purposes. That started in 1947, when the Arab League rejected UN Resolution 181, which would have made two states, Jewish and Palestinian, out of mandate Palestine and assured the Palestinians that, although the Jewish Agency had accepted Resolution 181, the Arab League would prevent its implementation. With the British mandate ending on 15 May 1948, Israel declared independence on 14 May, which was incidentally immediately recognised by both the United States and the USSR. On 15 May, the forces of five Arab armies, from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Transjordan, which provided the British-trained Arab legion, entered what had been mandate Palestine and fought the 1948-49 war, with the results we all know. We can only hope now that interests related to Iran and Islamist fundamentalism will at least make some Arab Governments do the right thing by Palestinians. I sensed from talks in Ramallah with the experienced negotiator Sa’eb Erekat and Abdullah Abdullah of Fatah, as well as with senior Israeli politicians, that there was a real move to reach agreements that would progress the peace process. I also spoke in Jerusalem with my right honourable friend Tony Blair, who is doing his utmost to carry out successfully his mandate as envoy of the quartet. I believe that there are some grounds for hope and am marginally more optimistic than the noble Lord, Lord Howell, about this. We have a window of opportunity in which this time we might just succeed, because of a combination of unique circumstances. First, the Palestinian Authority/Fatah is desperate to achieve an agreement that would produce improvements in the lives of Palestinians to vindicate itself in the face of Hamas. Secondly, a coalition in Israel of Kadima and the Labour party is also desperate to produce improvements for their people to vindicate their position vis-à-vis the hardliners of Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, whose electoral victory would almost certainly mean the end of the peace process. Thirdly, Arab Governments are very worried by the threat posed by Iran and the dreaded possible Shia crescent and also by the threat of Islamist fundamentalists to the stability of their own regimes, so at long last they are moved to take action to help to resolve the problems for the Palestinians, by directly contributing materially and politically to the Palestinian Authority. Abu Mazen needs their moral as well as material support. Fourthly, both Israelis and Palestinians have a desperate wish for peace in their lives. There are numerous organisations and projects for furthering understanding and contact between those peoples. I visited an outstanding example in a marvellous school in Jerusalem, where Jewish, Muslim and Christian children are educated by Jewish and Arab teachers in Hebrew and Arabic and all festivals of all three religions are celebrated. It is one of four such schools in Israel of the Hand in Hand organisation. It was wonderful to speak to these children and one has to admire them, their teachers and their parents. I was very much reminded of visiting Belfast under the auspices of the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education, or NICIE, and seeing the brave achievements of some very brave schools there. Fifthly and lastly, but certainly not least, there is the quartet envoy, Tony Blair, with his special experience of difficult negotiations and his unique ability to bring about conciliation. The conference in Annapolis, for which he and my right honourable friend the Prime Minister as well as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are working so hard to achieve maximum attendance, with the aim of achieving concrete results, is a truly unique opportunity for a breakthrough, but only if Arab Governments actively pledge themselves to the cause of settling the Israel/Palestine question once and for all. What is required above all else is political will, which I believe is there. There are answers, which everyone knows, to the much-vaunted impossible ““final issues””, such as Jerusalem and the right of return of refugees. The now unfairly disparaged Oslo process in many ways laid some foundations for the way forward in those issues. On Jerusalem, a very senior Israeli experienced in negotiations with Palestinians said to me that Jerusalem was already divided. In the evening Jews do not go to East Jerusalem nor Arabs to West Jerusalem. So what is de facto could become de jure and the old city with the Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy places could be put under international or UN control. This is close to what Resolution 181 of 1947 envisaged for Jerusalem, but the 1948-49 war resulted in Jordan taking the old city with subsequent desecration of Jewish sites and no access allowed to Jews—a situation which continued until 1967 when I visited the old city and witnessed the desecration that had taken place. On the right of return of refugees set out in the much quoted UN Resolution 194 of December 1948, there have been various plans proposed whereby Palestinians could return to the Palestinian state or other Arab countries with generous financial help for resettlement towards which Arab Governments have a responsibility to co-operate and contribute. The Palestinians deserve no less. Neither side will get everything it wants—Israel on Jerusalem or the Palestinians on the right of return—but the basis for a real settlement is definitely in place; it requires only everyone of good will to work to achieve it.