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Gaza

I will go through the three sets of specific questions that the right hon. Gentleman raised. Before raising them, however, he referred to the investigation of serious allegations of war crimes and other misdemeanours, and he will know that I said very clearly in my statement last week that those allegations must be closely and speedily investigated. Obviously, the three key parties to that investigation are the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Government of Israel, and we are in touch with all of them. I should also point out that however heinous is the crime of using people as ““human shields””—a terrible phrase—that does not change the responsibilities of parties to the conflict to spare the lives of civilians; it is important not to forget that. In respect of the ceasefire, we will hear more from the Israeli Foreign Minister on Wednesday. I spoke to her on Friday, and we will have to wait and see where the Israelis' thinking has got to on the smuggling issue and the suggestion of further memorandums of understanding. Obviously, we want to make sure that we make a practical difference in respect of the smuggling, which is in part a local issue across the Egypt-Gaza border, but which is also a wider one given the regional and even global flows of arms that take place. There are three limits on how much detail I can provide. First, by definition, since the people trying to do the smuggling are acting illicitly, there are natural limits on how much we will ever be able to reveal. Secondly, discussions are under way about the precise combination of different countries and different assets that will be deployed. Thirdly, the legal mandate also needs to be worked through. What was significant about the meeting in Sharm-el-Sheikh yesterday, and the one in Israel, was the commitment of the international community to make a difference on that issue. That is definitely a step change. On the humanitarian situation, it is very important to distinguish between immediate relief—the matter of life and death, in some cases, in respect of medical supplies now—and the reconstruction that will have to take place in due course. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether I was confident that there was enough; one can never be confident that there is enough, not least in circumstances such as these. Although I understand that the number of lorries going through the crossings has increased over the past day or two—I hoped to have the exact figure when I came to the House, but it had not arrived by the time I left for here—it would be foolish to say that I was confident that the organisation and the amount will meet the need. That is because the need is huge and, as was pointed out last week, given that journalists have not been to the area, the extent of the need is only now being sketched out. A joint EU-UN mission—a so-called ““needs assessment mission””—will go in precisely to get to the bottom of the extent of the need. I think that to pronounce confidence now would be complacent. On the role of the European border assistance mission, the 2005 agreement provides the basis for it and the personnel are in place and waiting, but, of course, very difficult political issues are associated with it. It was an agreement between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government, and both insist that they should be the partners of the EU force at any crossings. There are seven crossings in total—one of them into Egypt—and we need to ensure that the management arrangements are appropriate for all of them. Finally, on the wider comprehensive peace that is sought, one of the casualties of this crisis has, of course, been the Israel-Syria talks, which were broken off at its beginning. The comprehensive peace to which we are committed, as I believe are the right hon. Gentleman and his party, does indeed require compromises, but it also requires a process. That process will have to be akin more to the Madrid process of the early 1990s than to the Annapolis process of the past year—the key difference being the breadth of the Madrid process compared with the relatively narrow focus of the Annapolis process, however worthy and important it has been.