Israel and Palestine

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, it would be quite wrong if this House simply overlooked the worsening security situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories, so my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries is to be congratulated on obtaining this debate.

To those like me who have spent a substantial part of their professional life working for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute and working to give effect to UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was, of course, drafted and sponsored by Britain, and its successor resolutions, these are dispiriting days. There is an Israeli Government who have turned their back on that solution, a Palestinian Authority which has no new contribution to make, activists in Gaza whose sole response to any rise in tension is to fire rockets into Israel, and a slide, once again, towards violence right across the region in both Israel and the Occupied Territories.

It is easy to despair, but the hard fact is that there will be no stability and security in that region on the present basis—no number of Abraham accords, no amount of crackdowns by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories, no expansion of illegal settlements will bring that security and stability about.

What should Britain with its historic responsibilities for the state of the region be doing in these unpromising circumstances? Faced with Israeli intransigence to even talking about a two-state solution, we should make it clear that we will legitimise nothing less than that. We should do so by recognising a Palestinian state. Plenty of others have already done so.

Our policy of endless prevarication over recognition is a bankrupt one. It was defensible while negotiations were under way—and I myself defended it for many long years—but no longer even faintly credible. Will that bring about a solution? Of course not. But it would show that we will not be a party to any abdication of responsibility for the present drift toward tit-for-tat violence and a rejection of international law.

In addition, I hope we really will sustain our humanitarian support for UNRWA and for the suffering people in the Occupied Territories and Gaza. Allowing cuts in our aid programme to fall on them would be both shameful and counterproductive, and I hope the Minister can give us the latest FCDO commitments on those programmes which have been so important over the years.

We should engage at every level with the Government of Israel and with its people to demonstrate that we continue to value their state and their democracy, however much we may disagree with some of their present policies. That is no easy path to tread, but it is still worth while in my view.