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Gaza

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his kind words about the British diplomacy that led to Resolution 1860. There was hope, which I can comment on because it was publicly speculated on in the media, that we might even have obtained a 15:0 vote for the resolution. While he is right to observe that a US abstention was a significant change in US policy, we feel like the deep-sea fisherman who almost hooked the big one but had to make do with second best. It is still a sizeable catch but not what we had fully hoped for. However, it is still an important advance on where the international community as a whole stands on this issue. While he will not expect me to go all the way with him in his recasting of Hamas as a democratically elected movement as against a terrorist organisation, I certainly do not quarrel with him that Hamas was elected on the basis of popular support in Gaza. On his second point, while, indeed, there are very modest British arms sales to Israel, they do not comprise lethal material. He is well aware of the export licensing system and both EU and British rules on this and we can say with relative confidence that what we provide has not been used in the offensive attacks and has not cost the life of anybody in Gaza.