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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I agree. I was in Israel recently and asked for a special briefing from the relevant people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about their concerns, and the issue that the hon. Gentleman mentioned was one. They named a specific company about which they were concerned. However, if we have a United States President who wants to engage with Tehran, what do we do about sanctions? First, are they working? Even if we had full EU support, much trade from China and Russia goes to Iran, and much of Iran's support comes from those two countries. Secondly, I understand that the financial sanctions that we have discussed are widely dismissed in Tehran, partly because Iran sees the banking collapse in America and Europe and is pleased not to be part of that banking community and to have avoided suffering because of it. Iran feels that the sanctions slightly insulated it. We must consider whether we can make the sanctions better but also whether they are effective. If President Obama and his team intend genuinely to engage with the mullahs, how do we play the carrot-and-stick negotiations? How will he persuade them if he wants to increase sanctions? I put that as a debating point. If there is to be a change of approach in Washington, we may to need to think about our position, too. Concluding peace negotiations in the middle east will have massive ramifications, whether in Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan. We all know the global implications—the global prize—of successfully concluding those negotiations. When I visited Israel recently, I also talked to Dr. Fayyad of the Palestinian Authority and his deputy Foreign Minister, Dr. Soboh, and heard their views of the peace negotiations. I was pleasantly surprised. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians were incredibly optimistic about the current state of the negotiations. They said the same thing at different meetings, which I found reassuring. They have several messages to convey. First, they do not want outside interference in the bilateral negotiations, which are going well and are substantial. They ask for the space and time to conclude them. Secondly, they need the Arab countries to be more supportive of the Palestinian Authority and their attempts to conclude the peace negotiations—the Foreign Secretary said some good things about that recently. Sometimes, the Arab countries sit on the fence, some of them tacitly supporting Hamas and the extremist Palestinians. Frankly, that is not good enough. We now have an historic opportunity, but as the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks said, if we do not seize it, it might pass into history. We join the Foreign Secretary in calling on Arab countries to put their shoulders to the wheel and publicly play their part, by backing the negotiations and backing what the Palestinian Authority are trying to do. People need to understand more widely why there have not been more reports about the progress of the peace talks. The reason is that one of the key parameters that was agreed by both sides early on is that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. That parameter means that progress reports cannot be issued, because no interim conclusions will be reached until the final conclusion is reached. I would like also to mention the remarks that the Foreign Secretary made in response to my comments about settlements, which are critical to moving the process forward. I pay tribute to the Israeli Government and in particular the Israel defence forces on removing the settlers from the so-called house of peace in Hebron last week. When I visited Hebron, I stood just 20 or 30 yd from that so-called house of peace and saw the intimidation to which the Jewish settlers there were subjecting the Palestinian community. I saw a little Palestinian boy who claimed to have had his arm broken in a scuffle with the settlers. I saw the desecration of Muslim graves, which had been perpetrated by the Jewish settlers there. It was therefore good to see the IDF standing up to that intimidation and violence, and upholding the rule of law in Israel. That was an important development, because if we are to reach a final settlement, quite a number of settlers will have to be removed from their settlements in the currently occupied Palestinian territories.