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Middle East

My Lords, when I saw that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, had secured this debate—and I congratulate him on having done so—I wanted to participate for two reasons. The first was the importance of the issue. The second was that I knew that he, with all his experience, would, even in the short time available, give us an opportunity to think more reflectively and profoundly about some of the issues we face than is always possible in the immediate pressures. He has certainly set the tone. I am sure he would, however, join me for a moment in wanting to put on record, at a difficult time, appreciation and really a tribute to my noble friends in government for the determined lead that they have been giving on trying to find a solution. That applies to the Foreign Office, but also very much to DfID. In this context, the £243 million pledged at the Paris conference, the unqualified calls for the restoration of Gaza fuel supplies and the condemnation of the counterproductivity of unacceptable and internationally illegal collective punishment are welcome. I have spent a lifetime, outside this House, working in organisations very much caught up in this sort of situation. One of the things that I have learnt is that building peace is very different from imposing or fixing peace. There are no shortcuts. Widespread ownership is essential to the process and that has to be inclusive. Of course, outsiders can play a part as facilitators, but the moment that they begin to cross the line and start wanting to arrange it all and set the agenda, there are difficulties ahead. At the time of the first Camp David initiative under President Carter, I was Minister of State at the Foreign Office. When I reflect on that period, I realise that the flaw in his highly committed, dedicated approach was that it was not inclusive enough. I remember saying to some officials in the Foreign Office, ““The trouble is, at the bottom of the pile, there are still very significant Palestinian elements who are not being included. They don’t feel any sense of ownership of what is happening””. One has to give priority to trying to cast ownership and inclusion as widely as one can, and the real challenge is to bring in the most difficult, not the easy ones with whom it is possible to talk. As an observer of Northern Ireland from across the water, what I thought took tremendous courage—no one should underestimate what it took in that situation—was the willingness to start talking to the political representatives of the IRA. I think that the same is true of Hamas. I know that it will be difficult for my noble friend to agree to that, but I hope he takes the point. Hamas is not an absolutely frozen institution in which everyone is the same. There have been differences and there is pluralism in the organisation, although misguidedly the external pressures have done their best to eliminate that pluralism and drive control of Hamas into the hands of the extremists. Although it will take extraordinary imagination and courage by Israel, there needs to be a willingness to realise that securing the guarantees for Israel’s existence—to which I take second place to nobody—may have to be something that comes out of the process rather than laying it down in tablets of stone as an unnegotiated precondition of any conversations or talks about how that objective can be achieved. More widely in the region it means involving Syria and, yes, trying to involve Iran. I say that because, if I have learnt anything about conflict resolution, it is that one must avoid demonisation at all costs, and there have been some crassly insensitive and stupid things said about Iran. They demonstrate the total lack of a sense of history on the part of some of those who should know better. Iran is an extraordinarily significant regional power, at the moment feeling increasingly excluded. It will be a terrific challenge to bring Iran back into the fold, but if we really want stability in the region, what is the alternative? Incidentally, it has to be said that, in the polarisation, Iran is not the only potential nuclear threat in the region. Everyone knows that and to pretend to speak as though Iran is the only one does not help. At this juncture I pay tribute to the courageous Israelis and Palestinians who see all this and stand for a negotiated, mutual approach, perhaps especially those brave personnel in the Israeli military who have refused to take part in operations which they think are unacceptable. In 1967, before I was in government, as a young Labour Back-Bencher, I was in Israel at the time of the war and became caught up in it. What impressed me at the time were the Israelis who said to me, ““It’s all right for some people to talk in these extreme terms, but we’ve got to build peace with these people in the future””. I do not say that they were in the majority, but they were important voices. There have always been such Israelis, and we should seek all the time to strengthen their role. The Middle East and the plight of the Palestinians is central to global security and recruitment for militant extremism, leading to terrorism across the world. Why is that? It is because there is a real sense of injustice, and to deny it is just stupidity. It is a sense of injustice compounded by frustration at what are seen as corrupt and at times brutal authoritarian Arab regimes with which we are prepared to deal. They are regimes seen by many of the Islamic faith as hypocritical in their religion. That again is an underlying truth we have to face. We may not like it but that is the reality, and perception becomes an important part of political reality. All this is also underlined by what are seen as self-fulfilling prophecies about unreliable, ineffective government—for example, of the Palestinians—while fostering humiliation, instability and the impossibility of an effective, unified, well administered Palestine as a state, with the disruption and hardship caused by the wall, the attacks on centres of government, and all the adverse economic consequences of trade blocks and border harassment. I declare an interest. I am a former director of Oxfam and remain close to it. Oxfam keeps me well briefed on its front-line experiences as of now—today—in this situation. The cuts in power have been having grave and far-reaching impact on water supplies, sewage systems, hospitals and healthcare in general. Like other NGOs in that area—as well as international institutions—my Oxfam friends have become exasperated at the consequences of violence and its total counterproductivity on both sides. It is absolutely counterproductive. I will finish by quoting the present director of Oxfam, Barbara Stocking, whom I greatly admire. She has recently come back from the area and has been commenting on the most recent events. Her words are worth considering: "““The violence of the past week is a mark of the shameful failure of all parties to take the peace process forward. Blame can ""be endlessly debated. What must stop is the daily assault on the rights and security of civilians, Palestinian or Israeli””." If ever there were an example of the urgent indispensability of a co-ordinated European approach to these major international challenges, and of supporting those within the regimes who struggle to curb extremism and violence, this is it. We should be grateful to the noble Lord.