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Gaza

My Lords, at this stage of the debate, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, was implying, all the points that could be made have been made, so I can be quite brief. Hamas is a terrorist organisation. By its 1987 charter, it is committed to the destruction of the state of Israel and, for good measure, to the killing of Jews. It has never repudiated its charter, nor has it even considered doing so. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, dismissed that as mere rhetoric. If it were just rhetoric it would be unpleasant but essentially irrelevant. Unfortunately, Hamas is in a position to put its declared objectives into practice. Although it commands no international recognition, Hamas has de facto control of the Gaza Strip. It has built or adopted complex tunnel systems through which rockets supplied by Iran have been brought into Gaza from Egypt. Noble Lords may have seen a late-night news item shortly after the end of hostilities which showed a reporter being lowered down 60 feet into such a tunnel, which was still in pristine condition and in full working order. If the engineering skills, physical effort and financial backing that went into the creation and maintenance of those tunnels had been more usefully deployed, the hostilities would have been avoided altogether. Hamas’s rocket fire has been deliberately aimed at civilian targets in southern Israel. The current capability of those rockets is about 40 kilometres. In a year or two—the precise timing is irrelevant—those rockets will be able to reach Tel Aviv. No Government worth their salt would tolerate such a possibility; to do so would be an abandonment of the duty owed to their citizens. If a terrorist organisation was in control of territory adjacent to the United Kingdom, from which it fired rockets at the civilian population of, say, Kent, we would not tolerate it. If that territory was part of another country, we would require the Government of that country to do whatever was necessary to stop those attacks. If there were no other Government to do the job, we would undoubtedly do it ourselves. The Israeli attack was not only foreseeable; it was inevitable. Gaza is densely populated, and innocent people were bound to suffer. This fact is well understood by Hamas, which was storing and firing its weapons in and from the vicinity of mosques, schools and public buildings. The resulting deaths and injuries led to, and were calculated to lead to, a PR success for the Hamas cause as the tragedy unfolded daily and horrifically in our living rooms. This should not blind us to who is responsible for all the suffering. The truth is that Hamas, like the Taliban, has no respect for life, even for the lives of its own innocent people. It all boils down to a basic issue, which was drawn to the attention of my noble friend Lord Dubs when he met in southern Lebanon the family whom he described to us. If you believe, as I do, that the state of Israel should exist and that its people should be allowed to live their lives in peace, the points that I have been making are obvious and unsurprising. If you believe, as I do, that the Palestinian people should be able to live their lives in peace, what needs to happen is again obvious and unsurprising; if Palestinians want a sovereign state of their own, free from fear of attack from Israel, they must accept that the sovereign state of Israel must be free from fear of attack from the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, as we all know, Hamas will not accept one rather important part of that equation.