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Gaza

My Lords, the failure to resolve the Gaza crisis by the road map of the quartet bars the road to peace and makes the map irrelevant. More and more voices counsel direct contact between the quartet, Israel and Hamas, for it has been said that this, more than any other, crisis in the Middle East is not resolvable by military means alone. Be that as it may, I submit that psychological warfare is certainly a vital ingredient, and here I cannot absolve the unhelpful attitude of some weighty European, but also many British, media which refuse to distinguish between cause and effect and err in their judgment of what is and is not proportionality in attack and defence. I regret to say that the course of the present debate has been, with its display of good will and compassionate understanding, very one sided and condemnatory of Israel. I was in Israel the week before the Israeli entry into Gaza and sensed the bitterness of a population being continuously and evermore extensively harassed by rockets, which paralyse civilian life. After Sderot, Ashdod and Ashkelon, Beersheba has now become a prime target, a city whose university, incidentally, boasts exemplary relations with Arab and Bedouin students. I was for 10 years chairman of its board of governors, so I observed that at first hand. The number of missiles fired from Gaza has risen fivefold since 2001 and now reach within 40 kilometres of one of Israel's most important airports. What is cause and what is effect in this tragic situation? General Sharon made Israel withdraw its last soldier from the Gaza strip, together with 8,000 settlers, but the rockets continued to fly. The Hamas Government in Gaza refuse recognition of Israel's right to exist and agrees to only temporary ceasefires, which they use for replenishment of weaponry before they resume launching rockets, which are financed, refined and increased in numbers by their Iranian taskmasters. There is no more thankless task than to have to remind people again and again that, in keeping with the age-old tradition of guerrilla warfare, Hamas stores its weapons in tenement buildings, schools and even mosques and holds conclaves of its military leaders in civilian clothes in private homes and in the basement of Gaza central hospital. Students of history can cite similar situations in the Peninsular War against Napoleon in Spain and in the battles of the partisans against the Germans in Greece, France and Yugoslavia in the Second World War. However, what makes the fanatical Islamic terrorism of al-Qaeda or the military wings of Hamas and Hezbollah unique is not only its contempt for the life of the enemy or the innocent bystander, but its contempt for the life of its own kith and kin. Nothing is more moving than the image of a mother grieving with a dead child in her arms or of a heap of mutilated corpses, but if you sample terrorist literature, whether it comes from the caves of Bin Laden or the more pretentiously sophisticated desks of journalists in the Yemen, Syria or Saudi Arabia, you may find that it justifies the killing of hostile infidels, whether man, woman or child. Pamphlets argue that children, though innocent today, may grow up to seek revenge. I am afraid I cannot help remembering one of the most satanic documents of the Second World War, Heinrich Himmler’s speech to the gauleiters and SS commanders in Poznan in 1943, which argued in exactly the same words. Have we become so inured to the crime of sending young people to their deaths as living suicide bombs? Where are the letters to the editor, protest marches, torchlight processions against Governments or forces advocating this kind of death? Why are they missing? What is the attitude to the evil planners of martyrdom meriting rewards both in this world and the next? If this is not infanticide, what is? Why have the media simply accepted, with very little question, any facts and figures issued by Hamas? In 2008, the reputable Reporters Without Frontiers listed the Palestinian Territories as number 163 out of 173 countries on its yearly worldwide press freedom index. Very little has been written about Hamas's attempts to liquidate its political opponents during the first week of the recent fighting. Last week, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency in Ramallah published a detailed list of 181 names and locations of members of Fatah in Gaza who were executed, or, as the noble Lord, Lord Kalms, explained, wounded or imprisoned. All this needs considering too. To those who wish to arraign Israeli leaders for war crimes, I submit that Hamas is culpable of a double war crime against Israeli as well as against Palestinian civilians, and especially young children. As for Israel, public opinion surveys consistently show that 80 per cent of the electorates longs for a durable peace—the two-state solution—yet the barrage of anti-Israel propaganda coming from European media can only help those who believe that their hatred of Israel is incurable and that there is bile and bias in Europe and in this country. It can only encourage Israelis to elect a Government of robust, intransigent politicians who may claim that there is no acceptable peace-loving Palestinian partner, and therefore no peaceful solution in hand. That must be avoided. Therefore, this is the moment, perhaps the eleventh hour, for a compassionate understanding of both sides.