Israel: Arab Citizens

Baroness Warsi Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for securing this important debate. I welcome his personal experience and interest in the issues surrounding Israel’s Arab citizens and his proposals as to how Arab citizens might enjoy more equal and active citizenship. I acknowledge the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, about language and definition of identity. He speaks with great expertise, and I hope that he will forgive me if my FCO terminology does not quite meet those standards. In recent weeks the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and I have much discussed some permutation of this debate across the Dispatch Box. She has always been serious, measured and constructive and, for that, I thank her.

The promotion and protection of human rights is at the heart of UK foreign policy. How a country treats its minorities is an important test of a country’s democracy and respect for human rights and the rule of law. This is equally true for Israel. Indeed, it will become even more important for Israel as the proportions of the Arab Israeli and ultra-orthodox communities increase over time. Israel, as a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has an international obligation to ensure equal social and political rights for all citizens, irrespective of religion and race. Israel’s declaration of independence calls for the establishment of a Jewish state with equal social and political rights for all citizens irrespective of religion and race. However, successive Israeli Governments have acknowledged that Israel has not fully met its commitments with particular regard to the Israeli minority. The report by Justice Theodore Or in 2003 concluded that government handling of the Arab sector had been neglectful and discriminatory and made numerous recommendations as to how this could be addressed.

As we have heard, significant concerns remain about the situation of the Arab Israeli community. It is widely acknowledged to suffer discrimination, particularly at work and in government spending on housing and education, as well as in educational attainment. For instance, despite Israel’s impressive economic performance in recent years, current indicators suggest that the economic situation of Israeli Arabs is static or worsening. According to the OECD, 50% of Israeli Arabs live in poverty. The lack of town plans and planning permission for Israeli Arab towns is one of the main causes of inequality and of the failure of Israel’s Arab citizens to fulfil their economic potential. In many areas with a large Israeli Arab population, town plans either do not exist or are out of date and do not reflect population growth. In the absence of plans, new building cannot be approved, but faced with existing overcrowding and the expanding need for housing, Israeli Arab communities build without approval, which leaves them vulnerable to prosecution and demolition of the new structures. As such, no new Arab city has been built since the establishment of the State of Israel.

In the 10 years since the Or report was published there have been several positive changes, some of which were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Bew. For example, there has been an increase in non-Jewish police recruitment, from 0.1% to 8.9%; better police liaison with Israeli Arab municipalities and community leaders; and an end to the use of live fire as a means of crowd control. However, as the right reverend Prelate said, disappointingly few of the institutional recommendations put forward in the Or commission’s report to address the socio-economic causes of Israeli Arab frustration have been adopted. We continue to urge the Israeli Government to implement the recommendations made by the commission; specifically, to address the economic disparities and unequal access to land and housing.

These are issues which matter to the United Kingdom. One of the strategic goals of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv is to help Israel become more cohesive and inclusive, in particular through ensuring the place of Arab Israelis and protecting Israeli civil society. The embassy is consistently monitoring events and reactions in the communities and attaches great importance to their concerns. Nothing should be done to prejudice Israel’s non-Jewish citizens or to discriminate against people on the basis of their race or religion. We are deeply disturbed by instances of anti-Arab rhetoric or violence.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has taken important steps to support the socio-economic integration of Israel’s Arab citizens. We allocated £250,000 in 2011-12 to the Arab community to support various projects that aim to redress some of the marginalisation. This year we funded Tsofen, a non-profit organisation, to strengthen the high-tech sector in Nazareth. Tsofen, founded in 2008 by Arab and Jewish high-tech and community leaders, aims to advance the economic and social equality of Arab citizens of Israel by accelerating their entry into the high-tech industry and helping Israel’s high-tech industry to locate successfully in Arab towns.

We have also supported a project delivered by the Arab Center for Alternative Planning to help empower Arab municipalities to deal with the reform in planning legislation. This non-governmental organisation works towards equality and the integration of Israel’s Arab citizens into public life activities, while preserving their cultural identity. The centre has now been formally recognised by Israel’s Interior Minister and has the legal right to intervene in official planning procedures as an independent legal entity. The project’s activities have significantly increased the knowledge and interests of engineers, planners and mayors of the Arab municipalities.

We are also extremely grateful for the supportive work of the UK Task Force on Issues Relating to Arab Citizens of Israel. As the noble Lord, Lord Janner, described, the UK task force was set up in 2009 under the joint leadership of the United Jewish Israel Appeal and the Pears Foundation with the aim of supporting an inclusive Israeli society. Its commitment to facilitating new partnerships to advance the integration and opportunities of Israel’s Arab minority is entirely positive; I pay tribute to the particular role played by the noble Lord in this work. I will also take back the work that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to—specifically, by Hand in Hand—and look at whether HMG could look to take some of that forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, and the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised the issue of the Bedouin minority in the Negev, one of the most discriminated groups within Israeli society. Estimated at approximately 170,000 people, the Bedouin in the Negev comprise 12% of the Arab citizens of Israel. Between 1968 and 1989, half of this population was transferred into several Israeli-built townships in the north-east of the Negev. The rest remain in unrecognised villages built spontaneously by the Bedouin, without basic services such as electricity and running water. Unable to secure planning permission for such villages, whole communities have been issued with demolition orders.

In 2007, the Israeli Government voted to create the Goldberg commission to address the Bedouin issue. In 2011, the Goldberg commission issued its report and made several key recommendations which, if implemented, could go some way to addressing the long-running land dispute between the state and the Bedouin. These included: the recognition of most of the Bedouin villages; allowing the majority of the homes to go through a legalising process; and establishing a committee to hear and settle traditional land claims. We remain concerned that those recommendations have not yet been implemented and that the situation of the unrecognised Bedouin villages and houses remains largely unchanged, with demolitions still occurring.

We note that, following the Goldberg report, the Israeli Government put forward the so-called Prawer plan, which was intended to implement those recommendations and led to significant concern and controversy—the noble Baroness referred to that. There is an ongoing consultation process between the Government and Bedouin representatives; we understand that there is still some way to go before proposals are finalised. During his visit to Israel last month, the Minister for the Middle East raised our concerns on implementing the Prawer plan for the Bedouin of the Negev, again with Benny Begin, the Minister responsible for the Bedouin community. This is an issue which Mr Burt and the British ambassador have raised on a number of occasions with the Israeli Government. We continue to encourage the Israeli Government and Bedouin communities to engage in further dialogue to find a lasting and satisfactory solution to this long-standing issue of unrecognised Bedouin villages.

These issues cannot, of course, be separated from the wider context of the Middle East peace process. The UK has long been clear that we support a negotiated settlement leading to a safe Israel, living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state. This should be based on 1967 borders, with agreed land swaps, Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states and a just, fair and agreed settlement for refugees. That is the only way to secure a sustainable end to the conflict and it has wide support in this House and across the world. We welcome the fact that Palestine is now a non-member observer state at the United Nations, but sadly the situation on the ground remains the same. The UK will work urgently with the US and EU to call for a new initiative to restart the peace process.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, made specific calls for a move towards potential sanctions. He spoke of the potential lack of initiative on the part of the US. While I accept and understand the noble Lord’s frustrations, I am sure that he will accept that it will be difficult to deliver and move forward with a two-state solution without the co-operation of the United States. The noble Lord, Lord Singh, raised the issue of criminal justice and detainees. The treatment of Palestinian prisoners forms part of our ongoing dialogue with Israel, including the issue of child detainees. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office funded a visit and report by a team of respected British lawyers, which included the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. We have passed the independent report to the Israeli authorities and urged them to take forward the recommendations, including an end to shackling, night-time arrest of children and introducing audio-visual recordings of interrogations. These issues were again raised by the Attorney-General during his last visit to Israel in November.

My noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood spoke passionately and with great expertise and I agree that a settlement in the Middle East is in our interest. Instability there continues to have a destabilising effect on the region and the wider world. My noble friend Lord Palmer sought to bring an alternative view to the debate. He made an important contribution and I agree when he says that inequality must be tackled wherever and whenever it occurs. That point was also made by the noble Lord, Lord Weidenfeld. However, I am not sure that the reference by my noble friend Lord Palmer to the reasons for underachievement in communities in the United Kingdom bears any real comparison to the reasons for lower life chances among minorities in Israel. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece outlined the equality of opportunity that she as a member of a minority was afforded by the United Kingdom. She raised the important point that inequality is not intentionally perpetuated in the United Kingdom by policy decisions. I am sure that all noble Lords will understand my discomfort with the argument that serious discrimination elsewhere should be cited as a reason for justifying discrimination anywhere. The “it’s worse elsewhere” argument does not impress the Government much, because we will tackle inequality and discrimination of minorities wherever and whenever it arises.

To conclude, I thank noble Lords again for their participation in this thought-provoking debate. The situation of Israel’s Arab population is an important one, for Israel and for the region, with implications for Israel’s democracy and its relations with its neighbours. In line with the Government’s firm commitment to human rights, we will continue to support efforts, including by the Israeli Government and civil society, to address the problems of Israel’s Arab population and to build relations between the two communities.