Middle East and North Africa

Lord Kalms Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kalms (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, for almost two decades, one piece of received wisdom in particular has hovered over the subject we are discussing today. It has been received as wisdom in many departments of state and successive Governments of all political persuasions, as well as the Governments of many of our closest allies and friends. That piece of perceived wisdom is that all the problems of the region, all the troubles and challenges of north Africa and the Middle East, would be solved by a final border arrangement between the Government of Israel and that of the Palestinians.

That idea—that Israel is the key to unlocking all the problems of the region—was always absurd, not least because it ignored all the other terrible problems of the region. Would Yemen’s economy really boom if only Israel and the Palestinians came to a final status agreement? Would Saudi Arabia or Iran immediately become governed by nice, secular democrats? To ask the question is to answer it. The claim was absurd. Desirable though a final status agreement would be, it has nothing to do with the real and deep-seated problems of the region.

If we ever doubted that—and for years very significant figures in authority did—the beginnings of the Arab spring should have answered us. For when that happened, when the people of the region began to rise up against the tyrants of the region, they had many demands. The most potent were that they wanted a say in their own future; they wanted to share in the wealth, including the natural resources of their countries; and they wanted to have opportunities, a future and a say in how they were governed.

Of course, we know how badly much of that went. We know that in many cases those protesters were simply gunned down, imprisoned, tortured, executed or otherwise disappeared. We know that in some cases the revolutions were stolen from the liberals, who were too weak, by the extremists, who were too strong. In other cases, fragile, careful states have emerged. We will see how they do. But of all the crowds that came out, from Tunisia to Yemen and beyond, not one protested about Israel. Not one came out demanding a resolution in East Jerusalem. They came out asking for the rights that we in the West tend to take for granted but which they often seem light years away from achieving.

So what is the problem for the region? What are the solutions? They are not easy. In particular, there is no one key or one lock that will somehow magically address all the problems of a deeply troubled region. But if solutions are thin on the ground, they will at least become easier to comprehend if we accept one of the major factors of the region, which no discussion such as this can truthfully be held without—radical Islam. This year alone has presented an unusual amount of evidence to suggest that one of the overwhelming problems—if not the overwhelming problem—of the region is that presented by Islamic fundamentalism.

Earlier this year, we saw Boko Haram abducting hundreds of Christian girls in northern Nigeria for the crime of going to school and not obeying a fundamentalist Islamist interpretation which demands that girls must not undergo anything but an Islamist semi-education. Shortly afterwards, Hamas started the latest phase in its interminable and genocidal war against the world’s only Jewish state. Later in the summer, we watched as ISIS rampaged across Syria and Iraq, massacring, beheading and crucifying people as they went—not just anybody but all Muslims who do not share their fundamentalist worldview, Yazidis who refuse to convert to Islam, and all Christians who refuse to give up their faith and submit to Allah.

Sometimes it is Christians, sometimes Jews, sometimes Yazidis and very often it is other Muslims, but what we are seeing across north Africa, the Middle East and further afield is the same pattern. I do not say that these fundamentalist movements have everything in common: they often have disagreements. For instance, ISIS and Hezbollah are fighting each other in Syria, but they have far more in common than in difference. We cannot even begin to address the problems in the region unless we recognise that what we are dealing with is not simple. It is not about the old paradigms; it is about a region covered in many problems that can be helped on to the right track only if we—and they— admit to what they are up against. If we tackle the dominance of radical Islam, the region about which we are talking at least stands a chance of making a meaningful contribution to the 21st century, rather than retreating to a position more akin to Europe’s situation in the 17th century.

In the mean time, a certain amount of humble pie must be eaten in foreign policy establishments both here and in much of the rest of the world, for recent events have surely shown once and for all that Israel is not the cause of the Middle East's problems. Israel is pluralistic and technically advanced. It is a world leader in medical research and information technology. It is 100% committed to human rights for all its citizens—Christian, Muslim, Arab and Jewish. It extends those rights and advances to its neighbours whenever it has an opportunity to do so. It is a society in which prosperity is shared as much as anywhere else in the world. It is a society with all the complexities of a democratic Government and all the rigours of an independent and powerful supreme court. There is no country in the world that could claim better governance. Yet this is the country in the Middle East that many people have spent recent years trying to defame. So let it be said clearly here, and for all time, that Israel is not the problem for the Middle East. Rather, it is an exemplar and a proof of solutions to those problems.