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Middle East (IRC Report)

My Lords, I declare an interest because of past ministerial responsibilities and having spent a great deal of my life in the non-governmental sphere which is in many ways highly relevant to the situations we are discussing.

As a non-member of the committee, I place on record my absolutely unlimited delight at reading a report of this character. The report must be one of the wisest, most thoughtful and most provocative intellectually that there has been for a very long time. I hope the Government are therefore taking it very seriously. There are encouraging indications that this may be the case, and I hope that is so. I also am confident that my noble friends with responsibility in this sphere will take it very seriously indeed. So thanks to all concerned, both Members of the House and the staff of the committee.

The Government have rightly taken great pride in the part they played in bringing to a successful conclusion the Arms Trade Treaty. That was a very constructive role by the Government. Of course, we will be judged not just by what we did to get the treaty but by our consistency and integrity in applying it to our own affairs. There can be a big gap in that respect, and I am one of those who is deeply worried about the prevarication and equivocation on the issue of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Instead of looking for rationales and excuses as to why things are as they are, we should say categorically that, in terms of the treaty of which we were essentially pioneers, along with others, it is crucial that we take decisive action and leave the Saudi Arabians in no doubt whatsoever of where we stand.

At the turn of the century, I spent several years working as the rapporteur to the Council of Europe on the bitter and horrible conflict in Chechnya—I visited Chechnya nine times. There are certain things seared on my memory from that time. One is that the brutal, indiscriminate, insensitive action by the Russians was building up extremism. President Putin would say at that time, “But Lord Judd has to understand that we have an acute security problem on our southern flank”. That was certainly true—I did not differ at all from that analysis—but if that was the case, why were we driving people into the arms of the extremists who were making things worse?

What I like about this report is that there is a theme going through it: that these are the kinds of issues about which we should be thinking very deeply. How do we avoid making things worse? How do we stand up for principle? Bearing in mind that we cannot have it both ways, it is simply nonsense to pretend that there are not implications for security in this country arising from the way we may be conducting foreign policy. I wonder just how much we have thought about how many young potential recruits there are for extremist positions in this country by virtue of our failure to stand up as we should have done on Saudi Arabia.

On Iran, the report is magnificently written and the position of the committee members is courageous and right, but there are certain immediate points that we cannot brush under the carpet. I declare an interest as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Rights. In light of paragraphs 204 and 205 of the report, does the International Relations Committee agree that it is not appropriate for Iran arbitrarily to arrest and detain British citizens, including British-Iranian dual nationals, and sentence them under judicial processes that fall far short of international standards and that Iran should release all such citizens immediately, including Kamal Foroughi and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Furthermore, given the grave concerns about the deteriorating health of those individuals since their arrest and detention in May 2011 and April 2016 respectively, with the 77 year-old Mr Foroughi facing significant health risks of prostate cancer and blindness due to untreated cataracts and Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe suffering serious mental health problems and the apparent denial of appropriate medical care by authorities in Evin prison, is it not essential that more must be done immediately to ensure their release and that further irreparable harm to their health does not occur?

Generally on Iran, on the strategic issues I am glad that the committee is as firm as it is. I am also glad that it made it pretty clear that the present President of the United States is not helping in finding a way forward.

On Palestine/Israel, I cannot help remembering that, as a young Member of Parliament, I was in Tel Aviv when the 1967 war started. I had arrived there for an international conference and the war started the next morning. Deeply implanted in my memory was how during a heavy period of bombardment and fighting, when I was taking shelter with some Israeli people, they were listening to radio messages beamed into Israel by people who were of a rather militant frame of mind in supporting Israel. I remember some of them turning to me in that situation and saying, “It’s all very well for these people, but we have to work out a future in this region and we have to think of our long-term relationships with the Arab world around us”. I have never forgotten that.

In the same way, I have also always admired those members of the Israeli armed services who have stood up to be counted and said that they are not prepared to be part of something which they believe is not acceptable. I also have great admiration for young Israeli lawyers who stand up and defend young people in military courts. From that point of view, we must ask why we have not been more firm in our position. Of course, the two-state solution is the right one. I cannot think of anything guaranteed to build more insecurity into the future of Israel than to abandon the two-state solution. We want a solution in which Palestinians have confidence, self-respect and citizenship that means something in their own society.

I am sorry to keep quoting experience, but when you get to my age you begin to think about your experiences in life. On the negotiators, I had a while as chairman of the Committee of Middle East Questions for the Inter-Parliamentary Union. I began to feel at times that the negotiators in both camps had become institutionalised, that in a sort of way they might be playing a game that they both understood. If you caught them in social moments, they would be laughing, talking and chatting together. They would not be sharing a drink for obvious reasons. Well, they would share a drink but not alcoholic ones, necessarily. I thought there was a huge challenge there to build more opportunities for understanding to grow up around the negotiators and political leaders.

The contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, today have been very important, as they always are. His work is absolutely terrific. However, we should seek ways in which young people and professional people can meet from both communities, looking, talking and sharing experiences in areas where they have mutual concerns. That could do a great deal to help in building up a situation in which progress becomes possible.

Obviously I would like to say far more, but my final point is simply that we must learn—I am so glad to hear this repeated, and stimulated by the excellent report we are discussing—now at last that we cannot manage the Middle East situation any more than any other similar situation in the world. The solutions must be found by the people themselves. Our job is to assist in generating experiences, atmosphere and relationships

that can help with solutions being found. In so far as we start establishing deadlines, management targets and so on, it is disastrous. We should have learned that in recent years. Thank you to all those involved in the report, which is very refreshing and excellent. We are fortunate to have it.

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