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EU: Gaza and the West Bank

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for initiating this debate. I reassure him and other noble Lords that the Middle East peace process continues to be a high priority for the Government. I know that it is a topic of great interest to this House. The UK remains committed to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East and is working closely with its EU partners to offer all possible support to the Annapolis process. The EU has a critical role to play in this. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said that the Government had a lot to answer for. I am not sure that I accept that, but I certainly accept that we have been asked a lot of questions tonight, and I will do my best to answer as many of them as I can. The situation for the Palestinians and the ongoing peace negotiations continue to pose tremendous difficulties. It remains as important as ever that we progress on both if we are to build a better future for Palestinians inside a viable Palestinian state. The UK and the EU will, therefore, continue to play a leading role in the international community in supporting the peace process. Although I accept the impatience of many noble Lords who have spoken about the fact that Annapolis is almost a year old, it is worth reminding ourselves that a year ago, before Annapolis, there were no negotiations. Seven years had been lost without real talks. The conference changed that. Talks began and both sides restated their commitment to their road map obligations. The conference was also a signal of renewed international commitment to the peace process. It was encouraging for a particularly strong Arab attendance. Our own Foreign Secretary and the EU attended to lend our support. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, that the EU political association agreement is intended as a technical agreement; it is not meant to carry a political message. Indeed, in announcing it, the importance of the political situation as regards Palestinians was specifically marked out and the agreement was in no way intended to prejudice progress on that. The EU remains committed to ensuring that there is progress in the negotiations. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have visited the region and they speak often with the key players. Similarly at the EU level, the Middle East peace process is frequently discussed at Foreign Ministers’ meetings, most recently at the September informal meeting. The EU special representative, Marc Otte, spends a great deal of time in the region, and Javier Solana for the Council and Benita Ferrero-Waldner for the Commission are also deeply engaged. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, asked about the progress of discussions between the parties, referring to the fact that there was an original commitment for fortnightly meetings. I think it is correct to say that the last meeting between Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas occurred in the middle of September. Since then, Mrs Livni has met the chief Palestinian negotiators. While the change of government in Israel has inevitably slowed down the momentum of meetings, it is very clear that both sides are making every effort to keep the momentum of these talks moving. Throughout, we on the outside have been consistent in our message: we support the Annapolis process and, as part of this, expect all parties to fulfil their road map obligations. Of course, the talks have moved more slowly than the optimists hoped, but they have not collapsed as the pessimists predicted, so we will continue to build on the progress made. Part of supporting the talks is tackling actions which undermine confidence. The most striking example of that is Israeli settlement construction—a policy which serves to break down trust and make a final deal even harder. Settlement building, whether in east Jerusalem or the West Bank, is illegal and contrary to Israeli commitments, and we have made it clear that it must stop. Even since Annapolis, according to Peace Now, the number of tenders for construction in the settlements has increased by more than 500 per cent. In public and private, we, as the UK and the EU, have made clear our opposition to this. Another key plank of our support for the peace process is building Palestinian institutions that can govern effectively. In December last year, the international community pledged an extraordinary $7.7 billion at the Paris donor conference in support of the Palestinians based on the Palestinian Authority’s Reform and Development Plan. This plan, designed by Prime Minister Fayyad, offers a route to substantial reform of Palestinian institutions so that the Palestinian Authority can deliver essential services to Palestinians more effectively. The UK committed £243 million in support over three years, linked to political progress, which amounted to a substantial increase in the Government’s assistance. The European Commission pledged more than $1 billion over the next three years, making it the single biggest donor to the Palestinian people. We all know that the security sector is particularly important. Israel has legitimate security concerns but it is better for all if these can be met by Palestinians policing Palestinians. Our European partners have been very involved in this. On 24 June, Germany hosted a conference in Berlin to galvanise international support in this area. We announced that we would support it and have set money aside for security sector reform, including improving civil justice and public prosecution. The EU has a leading role in training the Palestinian civil police and the UK has been a long-standing contributor to that civil police training mission. We currently provide three police officers to the mission and have allocated £1.2 million of our funding to support Palestinian policing needs this year. We also support the US effort to reform the Palestinian national security forces, led by its security co-ordinator, General Dayton. There is obviously a long way to go, but as we are seeing in Jenin particularly, which has been the focus of our efforts, we are trying to bring together security and economic development, including co-operation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces. We think that it is showing some positive results, which we hope may prove a broader model for co-operation between both Israeli and Palestinian security forces, and that this more integrated approach will deal with economic development as well as security issues.