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Foreign Affairs and Defence

Indeed, the settlements and the closures are closely interlinked. Contrary to the opinion of many in this country, there is not only the wall that separates the west bank from Israeli but many internal walls within the west bank. In fact, there are far more walls and fences within the west bank. I put that point to Dr. Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister, who said that the settlements are the central problem—indeed, he went so far as to say that they created Hamas in the first place. I think he is likely to be right, not only because he is a Palestinian politician and should know but because that is the answer that we get from all Palestinians. They blame the breakdown of talks on the increasing number and size of settlements and on the closely connected matter of closures. My hon. Friend is right: according to the United Nations, the total number of settlements in the west bank is now 149, and the number of checkpoints, road gates, roadblocks, restricted roads, trenches, earth mounds and flying checkpoints is 553. There are checkpoints not just as people go in or out of the west bank—there are only eight of those—but internal roadblocks, built to accommodate and defend the settlements. They also have the effect of encircling every Palestinian town and city with a ring of roadblocks that have strangled almost all the life out of the Palestinian economy. The situation in the west bank is nothing like as bad as that in Gaza, which I also visited along with colleagues from both sides of the House. I believe that we were the first group of MPs to visit Gaza since the Hamas takeover and the release from captivity of Alan Johnston. We did so with the help of the UN and the Welfare Association (UK). We visited an industrial estate where almost every factory was closed. The borders are closed to everything except food and medicine, which has meant not just that 80,000 Gazans have lost their jobs in Israeli factories, but that all the Gazan factories have closed because they cannot get supplies or fulfil their orders. As a consequence, 80 per cent. of the population of Gaza are now unemployed and 80 per cent. live below the poverty line. Perhaps most dangerous of all, 20,000 students come out of the Gazan education system each year without a single job to go to. As a business man told us:"““We live in a pressure-cooker situation and if the pressure isn't relieved soon, it's going to blow up.””" Although Gaza has the worst problems in the occupied territories, and Hebron probably has the greatest tension, with the city centre having been turned into a ghost town to protect the Jewish settlement, to my mind the northern part of the west bank is the key to any settlement. If a Palestinian state is to be viable, it must be viable there. Of course, life goes on for most people in such cities as Nablus. It is still possible to get to and from work, although people may have to wait anything from half an hour to an hour at a roadblock. It is still possible to get to hospital, although in some cases the journey is a lot longer: from one village, an average of 45 minutes has been added to the journey to hospital. But although individuals can survive in the west bank, life is being slowly strangled out of the economy. Nablus has always been a great commercial centre, but the roadblocks, fences and checkpoints are slowly killing the economy. That applies even more to such cities and towns as Qalqilya, which is surrounded on three sides by the wall, which of course Palestinians cannot pass. Before I am accused of being an extremist, I should say that Palestinians who support terrorist organisations are extremely misguided and are acting against their own interests. However, if the Israelis go on expanding the settlements, they must expect that terrorists will get more recruits. I claim no originality in that view, because everything that I am saying is being said by Israelis as well as by Palestinians. Brigadier-General Ilan Paz of the Israeli defence force says:"““After seven years in which people are not able to move freely in and out of their home towns, after so much distress has built up, so much humiliation, depression and hopelessness, not only are these interior checkpoints inhuman, but they also create an atmosphere that can actually cause terror, not prevent it””." I oppose terrorism, but I predict that if the Palestinian towns are encircled and their economies are strangled, as is happening in the west bank, and if they are besieged and effectively imprisoned and impoverished, as is happening in Gaza, people will lash out in any way they can and the situation can only get worse. Again, that is being said by Israelis and not just by outsiders. Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Israeli security services, recently said:"““People say that Palestinians behave like madmen. It is not madness but a bottomless despair.””" I agree with him on another point that he makes: if one wants to preserve the Jewish and the democratic character of Israel, the only way to do so in the long term will be to create a Palestinian state. Expanding settlements is not only against the law, the Geneva convention and any number of United Nations resolutions, but it is against Israel's self-interest. Some cynics even now say that Israel does not want peace, it wants Palestine. It already has 78 per cent. of the land of historical Palestine, but as a result of the wall, military zones and the creation of military-only areas in the Jordan valley, it will have 88 per cent., leaving only 12 per cent. of the original historical Palestine for the Palestinians. One can only forgive Palestinians for thinking that the Israelis' secret agenda is to take the whole of Palestine and to allow the Palestinian population to be dispersed or disfranchised or disempowered in small enclaves. I am not a cynic, and I take the Israeli Government at their word when they say that they want peace and a two-state solution, but I end with two questions. The first was put to us by a Palestinian neurologist. He asked:"““If you are serious about a two-state solution, is not the first thing to do to call a halt to the expansion of settlements?””" I add a question of my own. Is it not time that the UK Government lent their support to the United Nations' using the powers in chapter VII of its charter to enforce the will of the vast majority of its members that there should be an end to the expansion of settlements in the west bank?