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North Africa and the Near and Middle East

I have been through the miserable experience of what ought to be a pleasant, if short, journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. One goes through many checkpoints and then sees the obscenity of the wall around Bethlehem and how it goes through streets and fields and takes people's land away. Some people cope with it in a witty way. I went to a nice, ordinary Palestinian café in Bethlehem that I had been to before the wall was constructed 3 or 4 metres in front of it. The people there had renamed it ““The Wall Café”” and painted the menu on the wall. One sat in the café and read the menu off the wall, and everything on it was to do with the wall. One could have wall falafel, wall burgers, wall chips or wall coffee—it was ““wall”” everything. What a way to have to live! People see their whole communities and societies destroyed by the construction of the wall and the construction of settlements. Palestinians living in their village on their farm, with their olive groves, oranges or whatever else they grow suddenly find that a wall comes and they have lost access to their land, or a settlement comes and all their water is taken away, or a road is built that they are not allowed to use. There are settler roads and settlements supported by the Israeli army and police forces, who are condoning absolutely the theft of land and the occupation of the best land with the best water supplies. Then they say, ““Come on—let's make peace.”” I am sorry, but if they are going to make peace they must start by ending the settlement policy and withdrawing the settlements from the west bank. But we are quite a long way away from that. Palestine applied for UN membership, and that is to be decided. I hope, although it is probably a very faint hope, that the British Government will vote in support of it. I understand we are going to take the incredibly brave position of abstaining—a really tough decision to make. And what happened when the UNESCO membership went through? Israel withdrew the tax money that should be paid to the Palestinian Authority, which means the authority is rapidly running out of money, and the United States withdrew funding from UNESCO, which means that UNESCO will have a financial problem. Sorry, but for what? Because the Palestinians had the temerity to want to be a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. That is a truly ridiculous situation. If we want peace in the middle east, we must recognise the Palestinian people and negotiate with their representatives, whether we like them or not. There are lots of representatives of the Palestinian people: Hamas, Fatah, independents, people who undertake civil disobedience and pacifists. There are people of all descriptions and views, but they are all Palestinians and they all recognise the right to exist as Palestine within that region. Israel seems incapable of deciding what its borders are, yet insists that Palestinians should continue to give up land. I strongly support the right of the Palestinian people to exist and to have their own identity, and putting false barriers in the way will not bring about peace. Israel, however, is a very powerful country. It is the world's fourth largest arms exporter and a possessor of nuclear weapons. It has not signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but it has signed up to the Mediterranean weapons of mass destruction-free zone. As a nuclear power, Israel must recognise that if we are to bring about peace in the region, it needs to be involved. Last year's NPT review conference called for a nuclear-free middle east, so Iran as a member of the NPT organisation must obviously be part of that just as Israel, I suspect, should also be part of that process. I do not want anyone having nuclear weapons in the middle east, and I think that the best way to deal with Iran is by consultation and by having as many dealings with it as possible. It is not to condone the human rights abuses or everything that goes on, including the imprisonment of trade unionists and all the other denials of human rights, but to recognise the lessons we have learned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Are we seriously going to go down the road of having a war in Syria or Iran? I sincerely hope not. I want there to be peace and justice, but I am not convinced that the process of wars and British involvement in those wars have done anything but cost us a great deal of money and brutalised our own country. Nor have they improved our standing around the world. The Department for International Development does a great job in many ways and many places, including Palestine. We seem to be obsessed in this country with the idea that a nation of 65-odd million people on the north-west coast of Europe has the funding, resources and power to have global reach. I am not sure we do. We need to think about these things and start being much more supportive of international institutions, international law, human rights and all the other issues that go with them, rather than turning a blind eye to human rights abuses because it suits our commercial interests at certain times to sell arms, buy oil or whatever else. Let me conclude with a final thought. I have met a number of former soldiers who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, some of them can be found in the occupations around London. Tragically, an awful lot of former soldiers can be found as homeless people and others going through a very bad time in their lives. Almost a century ago, Siegfried Sassoon wrote that the"““the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it””." A statement has been issued by 15 British soldiers and two Royal Marines, supported by four Americans. The first signatory is Joe Glenton, who refused to go to Iraq and has since left the Army. I shall not read it all out because it is quite long, but I shall quote part of it:"““We are veterans, from the British and American Armed Forces, acting on behalf of soldiers and citizens at home. We know that these wars have nothing to do with democracy, security, women's rights, peace or stability, they are fought for money and power, nothing else. Our comrades' blood has lubricated the ambitions of a few. The goals could only have been achieved by negotiation and this remains the case.""We have seen and endured the suffering of the soldiers affected by these wars and, unlike those who send them to fight, we know these people at a human level. We have seen and regret the suffering of the innocent people in the countries involved. We are protesting against the conduct of the war and the reasons it was started by the United States and the United Kingdom. We object to the insincerity and imperialistic objectives, for which people continue to be sacrificed, displaced, tortured, imprisoned and wounded.””" It goes on to say that they think 10 years is enough for these wars. I know that is not a majority view in the House and might not even be a majority view across the whole country. However, people are increasingly questioning our foreign policy and the amount of resources we spend on weapons of mass destruction and our own nuclear weapons while claiming that nobody else should have them. I think we need a bit of a rethink on our foreign policy. We should admire and support those who stand up for democracy, but let us not start another war with Syria or Iran. That is not the right way to go.