Lord Collins of Highbury
Main Page: Lord Collins of Highbury (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend—or former noble friend, temporarily—and congratulate him on initiating this debate. It is incredibly important that we discuss these issues. I also welcome the noble Baroness to the Front Bench. I am really pleased to see her responding today to the first of what I hope will be many more exchanges in the months and years to come.
As a number of noble Lords have indicated, peace and reconciliation are the only secure way to improve the condition of children across the region. The targeting of civilians must be condemned from whatever quarter, but indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel is clearly a violation of international humanitarian law and must end. As my noble friend Lord Judd said, the really important element of this debate is constantly to emphasise the process of reconciliation. But a situation where ordinary people are punished for the acts of groups they have nothing to do with will ultimately make peace harder to achieve. Only a permanent ceasefire that addresses the root causes of the conflict can bring lasting security to both Israelis and Palestinians. A two-state solution that guarantees a viable future for both Palestinians and Israelis must remain the goal of the international community. But the pathway to achieving this must start with the protection of rights and security for all. As my noble friend Lady Massey said, we will never be able to challenge the culture of mistrust and violence while communities are condemned to a future without hope and to live in an environment that is uninhabitable.
The UK, I am proud to say, has played its part in trying to restore hope. In August 2015, DfID agreed an additional donation of £3 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency to help keep open 685 Palestinian schools—an important element of ensuring that peace and security. These projects are essential in delivering basic education for 500,000 Palestinian refugee children. Could the Minister update the House on the progress of this project and say whether DfID plans to support other similar efforts to support children going to school?
DfID is the third largest donor to UNRWA’s general fund and emergency appeals, providing over £43 million, and has also supported intercommunal projects. We had a debate not so long ago focusing on some of those, and I hope the Minister will be able to update the House on some of these projects. One was about building understanding among schoolchildren, and all those issues we have been discussing today. I hope she can give us a progress report.
Last year, as noble Lords have mentioned, the Government launched a review into their funding of the Palestinian territories after allegations that funds were going towards incitement projects and the payment of so-called salaries to convicted Palestinian terrorists by the Palestinian Authority. DfID confirmed it was already undertaking such an examination as part of its bilateral aid review, to consider how it can best support progress towards a negotiated two-state solution. Earlier in the year, we were told that the review would be completed in the spring. A few weeks ago in this Chamber, the then Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said it would be completed in the summer. I have previously expressed my concern about the capacity of DfID to deliver not only the review but the outcomes of the review. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, indicated that the Government had brought the multilateral, bilateral and civil society reviews together to give a much more focused picture of how we can deliver better in those countries where there is most need. Can the Minister confirm whether DfID will continue the review of its programme in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as part of that bilateral aid review and whether this is still scheduled to report at the same time? That will hopefully be in the summer, but seasons seem to be a movable feast for this Government sometimes.
According to the press reports that I have seen in preparation for this debate, Israeli occupation authorities have put 65 Palestinian children under house arrest and 12 others in administrative detention since the start of this year. Noble Lords referred to the case of a 14 year-old Palestinian boy, who on 19 July was sentenced to six and a half years’ imprisonment. That boy is one of 414 Palestinian children currently imprisoned by Israel, most of whom are imprisoned on charges of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Like my noble friend Lady Blackstone, I ask the Minister what efforts the Government have made and what discussions they have had with the Israeli authorities to address this incredibly worrying trend, which is in violation of UN conventions.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, also highlighted, in opening this debate, the rate of demolition of Palestinian houses and structures, in particular in Area C of the West Bank, which has spiralled since 2016. So far this year, a total of 522 homes or other community structures, including animal shelters and solar panels, have been destroyed or confiscated, affecting 2,231 Palestinians, half of them children. The total number for 2015 was 453 demolitions and confiscations in this area, so there is a worrying growth trend. The number of demolitions in February was the highest in a single month since the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs began documenting demolitions in 2009. Since the resumption of structured dialogue between the EU and Israel on 15 March, 170 Palestinian structures, including 49 EU donor-funded aid projects, have been demolished or confiscated. We have heard in this debate that to build a sustainable two-state solution, we need to ensure that both sides feel secure, but more than 42% of the West Bank has been allocated by Israel to regional settlement councils for construction, shrinking the space that will be available for Palestinians to build that sustainable state.
I welcome the support given by the UK Government to the EU funding guidelines for Israeli settlements and to companies about trading with them. According to a 2013 World Bank report, Israel’s control of only Area C in the West Bank cost the Palestinian economy $2.1 billion a year, or 35% of its GDP. Ultimately, the value of the UK’s aid to the region will continue to be seriously undermined by the economic damage caused to the Palestinian economy by settlements.
We must also focus our support on the conditions necessary for functioning and effective Palestinian political representation across the entire Occupied Palestinian Territories. We have heard in the debate that, despite limited progress, reconstruction in Gaza following the conflict in 2015 has not gone smoothly. More than 8,000 destroyed homes have not even been touched yet, and 20% of water and sewerage networks have not been fully restored. I completely understand what my noble friend Lord Turnberg said about some of the reasons for that, but we need to focus on it. The international community had responded generously following that conflict, but the need for aid is increasing. The nearly decade-long Israeli siege has had major consequences for Gaza. Of the 1.8 million people living in the 360 square kilometres, 43% are without work, making it the highest unemployment rate in the world.
We have seen the development of a Palestinian area that has become incredibly dependent on aid. If we are to break that cycle, we need to provide more than simply facilities, we need to provide hope. I conclude by saying that I want a secure future for Israel. I believe the best way to achieve it is to give hope to Palestinian children.