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Global Security (Middle East)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and members of the Committee on a fine analysis of the situation as they saw it when they produced the eighth report of the 2006-07 session. I make no apology for concentrating on the current situation in the Gaza strip. Indeed, I have always believed that the existing conflict between the Israeli Government and the Palestinian people creates so much tension not only in the middle east but elsewhere that the Government must devote as much time to settling it as they successfully devoted to tackling the Northern Ireland situation. I once heard someone say that the only way to do that is to talk and to carry on talking—night and day, if necessary—and never to stop the talks until a settlement is reached, and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister and his Department to do that. The debate is timely for that reason, obviously. When the Israelis disengaged from the west bank and removed their settlers in 2005, I had great hope that there was some sincerity about following the then road map. I, too, was a UN observer for the presidential elections in the early part of 2006 when President Abbas was elected. In Ramallah that night, there was great hope. In fact, there was great hope all over the Palestinian territories that there had been a proper democratic election. There was very little criticism of it, apart from in Jerusalem, where people were prevented by the Israelis from voting properly—they had to vote in post offices—but I do not want to concentrate on that today. My hope was not dashed when Hamas came to power in the democratic election that took place a year later. We have been urging democracy on the peoples of the middle east, and the west's biggest mistake was ignoring the Hamas Government elected then. The west did not engage in talks with them; in fact, it did quite the opposite. The conflict has repercussions all around the middle east region. For some time, I have believed that the tensions between the Israelis and neighbouring Arab countries are provoked by the situation. If we can reach a settlement, some of the tensions in the middle east would begin to subside—I would be naive to think that they would disappear completely. However, the repercussions of the conflict spread wider than the middle east. Hon. and right. hon. Members who represent a constituency such as mine, with large numbers of Muslim constituents, will know that the repercussions are strongly felt in those communities. I do not think that pouring money into community cohesion will heal those deep-seated wounds until we show some sincerity about tackling the conflict. At the moment, I am completely exasperated. Israel—this is an important point—is damaging further its reputation by the actions it has taken in Gaza in recent weeks and months. Anyone who looked at the inside pages of The Guardian today to see pictures of the barrier between the Gaza strip and Israel crashed down, and read about the 17 explosions that blew up concrete sections of the wall, will find the event remarkable. To me, it is almost like the night when I heard that the Berlin wall was crashing down. I wish that the dividing barriers—the walls surrounding the west bank and between Gaza and Egypt—would come down, and that the countries could have proper diplomatic relationships. What happened yesterday demonstrates the desperation of the Palestinian people, as someone else said. They cannot even get mattresses for their children to sleep on—they have been sleeping on the floor. People carried cigarettes back—although admittedly, I do not approve of that and I do not smoke—but they also carried back basic materials that had run out, such as cooking pots. Everything that came back through that barrier yesterday did so because some materials are no longer available in the shops in Gaza.