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Israel

My Lords, in the French newspaper Le Figaro this morning the Prime Minister of Turkey, Mr Erdogan, gave a very interesting interview about many different matters and problems including the Middle East. He was asked, as relations between Israel and Turkey did not seem so promising at the moment, what the situation was as far as he was concerned. He replied: "First of all, I wish to underline that our relations with Israel are not broken off. Our exchanges continue on the usual basis … But I have to say at this very moment, Israel does not unfortunately support the idea of a peace process in the Middle East. Let us take the example of the constructions of settlements in the West Bank. The whole world is demanding now that they are interrupted and reversed and lately President Barack Obama has said the same thing clearly as has Hillary Clinton. We know equally the position of all the European countries. But does Israel stop those developments as a result of these pressures? The answer is plainly no". Those are sobering quotes indeed from a very respected Prime Minister of Turkey and someone who represents a country with which Israel has had very excellent relations over many years. It is a Muslim country, mainly secular but with a growing religious input, but it has become disillusioned with one of its long-standing friends. Does it make sense for Israel to alienate a country like that, as it has increasingly done so many others? Despite that I am delighted, if that is the correct verb, to launch this debate in the nick of time before Dissolution and I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, and all other noble Lords who will speak in the debate, especially my noble friend Lord Alderdice, who has played a major role in this area already over the years and has replaced the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. Even as we speak, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is on his way to an election campaign meeting in Bermondsey, I believe; I wish him well on that occasion. Henry Siegman, writing in the Financial Times on 24 February this year said: ""No country is as obsessed with the issue of its own legitimacy as Israel; ironically, that obsession may yet be its salvation "." By that he meant that the frustrated and angered international community might well end up asking the UN to accept a Palestinian declaration of statehood within the agreed pre-1967 borders, without the mutually agreed borders that a peace accord would have produced. The Palestinians cannot be left for ever stateless without citizenship. This matter must be reversed as quickly as possible. It is very interesting to note, for example, that Israel itself has recently been described as a state without necessarily the firmly fixed borders that all states should have, in the sense that these negotiations may cause somewhat of a change if there is a genuine peace process, but that remains to come out of what is going on now. Indeed, there could be other bizarre side effects to Israel from the growing defiance and intransigence of the increasingly foolish and myopic Netanyahu Administration. I speak as someone who has been a proud and enthusiastic friend of Israel as well as a supporter of Palestine in its hour of need. I despair at the antics of the politicians in the coalition who are leading Israel down a blind and false path. The Foreign Minister is a deeply disappointing figure. It is only now that the US Government have at long last moved away from the nightmare years of George Bush to a determined, fair and thoughtful President who will, we hope, grasp this painful nettle, as he did with the healthcare issue in internal politics at long last. But for Netanyahu to have defied President Obama recently in Washington DC is itself unbelievably absurd in the present brittle state of affairs in the Middle East and the growing anxieties that we all perceive. If Obama achieves a just and balanced two-state solution and the removal of the settlements, he will be the universal world hero for years and will finally have earned that prematurely accorded Nobel peace prize. It will be a fantastic achievement—but it looks some way off at the moment. At last, however, the quartet is lumbering into some semblance of reluctant movement forward with a recent gathering, but much more needs to be done. I especially ask the Minister tonight to give some account of what the pathetic and laughable efforts of the EU portion of the quartet intends to do from now on to insist that Israel behaves properly as the established state. We recall still with bitterness the chilling accounts of the 42 vetoes of UN resolutions as mentioned in the famous book by Mearsheimer and Walt in 2007 by the United States over the period 1972 to 2006, greater than the combined total of all other UN Security Council members over that period put together. What a disgrace for the country that professes to be the leader of the western world; I am not sure that that role is any longer applicable in the world, for lots of other reasons as well. The list of Israeli violations of international law since the illegal annexation of the West Bank in 1967 is so long that I have no time to mention them tonight. Israel’s defiance of the agreed road map is also now well documented, and we can add to that woeful saga the history of violations of civic and human rights in the apartheid colony that the Occupied Territories have now become; the extra-judicial murders that we have recently seen in the press, seemingly authorised by Israeli Ministers and the military; and the continued incarceration of more than 8,000 detainees, mostly without proper due process, equal to more than twice the pro rata United Kingdom entire prison population. Then there is the killing of civilians in Gaza, and the illegal settlements with some 400,000 settlers, who literally have no right to be there at all. How reckless can a Government of a western-style democracy decide to be? Presumably as reckless as Blair and Bush were in Iraq. We seem to live in a world where only the US, the UK and Israel feel that it is all right to bomb civilians, as in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Lebanon and Gaza. Among the advanced countries, no one else seems to do it on a regular basis, apart from one or two unfortunate accidents among other NATO members in Afghanistan. Israel even attacks Syria with impunity, apparently, without any criticism uttered in Washington at all. In fact, if sensible public opinion in Israel were respected and followed by a sensible and moderate Government, as it used to have in the old days, these dreadful violations of international law would not be enacted. I repeat my previous admiration for the millions of decent citizens in Israel who do not accept these dark prescriptions for the future. I raise my hat to JFJP, including its UK adherents—people of remarkable courage and tenacity—as well as to the 300-plus ladies of Checkpoint Watch, who go daily to the West Bank to report on violations of abuse of decent Palestinians struggling to survive, and to the hundreds of signatories in the Times on 1 December last year of British and international Jews welcoming the Goldstone findings. I single out too Gerald Kaufman MP for his bravery, and Peace Now—the UK branch and in Israel—as well as Bet’Selem and the other human rights groups in Israel, and the brave younger members of the military who formed the Breaking the Silence group to complain about abuses by the military of hapless Palestinian civilians. The list is very long and shows a decent side of a country, which can still—if only its short-sighted Government see sense—avoid becoming a pariah state like apartheid South Africa. Because of the nature of this Question, I have not in this debate mentioned the long list of all the things that the Palestinians need to do if peace talks start properly. I presume that Senator Mitchell will work hard to be even-handed to both parties. But the fact remains that the Israeli Government, as the established order, supported as to their future security unconditionally by the entire international community, must take the lead as a colonial occupier that committed the violations of international law and created the Palestinian victims in the first place. That is what President de Klerk did in South Africa in 1990 to 1994. Sadly, the EU now has to consider seriously trade and other sanctions if Israel is not seen to be compliant with the growing anger and frustration of the international community. It would also be a good idea if it abandoned its defiance on the nuclear arsenal and subscribed to the NPT as well. Finally, we watch with care and apprehension how the Muslim world of Arabia and beyond, as well as Muslim non-Arab countries like Iran, watch all these matters against the background of Israel’s short-sighted rejection of the Arab League peace offer, made as long ago as 2004 and repeated frequently ever since. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and is expelled, quite rightly, after one year; Israel is still there after 43 years in the Occupied Territories. That cannot be right for the Arab man and woman in the street. Israel has a great deal to offer its own citizens and neighbours, if true peace arrives and the Palestinians are given their place in the sun as a truly sovereign independent state, only seeking some 22 per cent of the combined territory. Israel has so much, the Palestinians so little. It is truly time for that Israeli generosity, which is such a feature of this excellent country. When I first went there in 1970, I was deeply impressed. I want to be impressed again.