Middle East: Recent Developments

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Friday 13th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend the Minister for his wide-ranging introduction to the debate.

If one is to focus on good omens today—Friday, 13 July—one positive straw in the wind might be Libya’s recent election results. Mahmoud Jibril’s National Forces Alliance appears to have won the elections. We are told by experts that that is good news for the forces of secularism and democracy. Mahmoud Jibril headed Libya’s National Transitional Council from August to October 2011. However, before we get too elated by his election, we might note that an Amnesty International report on torture states:

“A Libyan Government headed by Mr Jibril has it all to prove on questions of democratic reform and human rights, as is the case for new post-despotic regimes across the region”.

My noble friend Lord Lamont referred to a comment made by Dr Kissinger. I would add that we must move on from Dr Kissinger’s comment, in another context, that:

“He may be a despot, but he’s our despot”.

It is excellent that the UK coalition Government are spending £40 million on the Arab Partnership Participation Fund,

“for political reform, supporting free and fair elections, stronger parliaments, media and judiciaries”,

in countries across the region. Last year, in a speech on the Arab spring, the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, said:

“Successful revolutions may change the world overnight. But, in many ways, it’s the morning after that the real work begins”.

Noble Lords will not be surprised if I say something about Israel and the Palestinians. In that context, I declare that I am a vice-president of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel. In a debate that is not specifically about Israel but about the Middle East in general, I am keen to avoid the trap of focusing only on Israel/Palestine. The region faces a great many challenges of which—as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said—the Israel-Palestine peace process is only one.

I was going to talk about Iran but the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and my noble friend Lady Falkner have provided a forensic analysis of the situation which makes anything that I could say probably superfluous. I would add just one comment. I am pleased that, on 21 June, the Minister for the Armed Forces, Nick Harvey, said:

“Threats or attempts to block the Strait of Hormuz show a contempt for international law as it is seen by the majority of the states in the region, if not the world … Any attempt by Iran to do this would be illegal and … unsuccessful”.

I turn from Iran to recent developments in Egypt, which my noble friend Lord Anderson commented on. Amid the uprisings that led to Mubarak’s ousting a power vacuum emerged in Sinai which was quickly filled by Jihadists from mainland Egypt and neighbouring Gaza. The worry in the region is that the new President of Egypt and his Muslim Brotherhood party have promised to revise the Egypt-Israel peace treaty—whatever that means.

The consequence for Israel is that its once peaceful border with Egypt has turned dangerous, and the situation in Sinai has allowed increased weapons-smuggling into Gaza. More importantly, the Sinai peninsula has become a launch pad for terrorist attacks, such as the killing of an Israeli worker on 18 June. A cell of approximately four terrorists planted and detonated a roadside bomb beside jeeps carrying workers via the border, killing Said Fashpashe, an Israeli construction worker. The recent escalation in violence along the Sinai-Israel border has worried many and could be part of a conscious effort to establish the Sinai as a new base for Jihad operations.

My plea in your Lordships’ House is that balance is needed. This has come through in a number of speeches from noble Lords. I give an example of bad balance. On Monday this week, the General Synod of the Church of England passed a motion to support the work of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, or EAPPI, a project of the World Council of Churches. EAPPI sends participants as accompaniers to the West Bank for three to four and a half months, with less than a week scheduled in Israel. The accompaniers’ role is to witness and recall Palestinian life on the West Bank, such as at checkpoints and Israeli defence actions. I am certainly not justifying all that Israel does, but this creates a one-sided understanding of the conflict. On their return the ecumenical accompaniers, or EAs, have to fulfil at least 10 speaking commitments, and reports back from several of those meetings have been that they are biased and have propagated anti-Israel sentiment. Their literature has suggested hacking government websites and a cultural and artistic boycott of Israel which helps no one. It is unhelpful in understanding what is truly a complex situation, as many noble Lords have said.

There is another way—that sounds like a political statement. The Proms begin tonight, and it is heart-warming to see the West-Eastern Divan youth orchestra playing, which includes Palestinian musicians from the West Bank and musicians from Israel. They are ambassadors that help an eventual peace to arrive.

I would have liked the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, to be in the Chamber. She spoke once before, eloquently, and did so again today, about what she has witnessed in the West Bank. The last time she left before I spoke—perhaps she can read it in Hansard. Yes, there are problems and she witnessed them, and that is it. But the economy of the West Bank to which she and other noble Lords have referred has actually percentagewise increased. In this country we would envy the percentage increase of that economy, albeit from a low level. But it is an increase, and those who that decry it are not seeing the effects of what many participants have managed to achieve.

Comments were made about water, which is a dreadful problem in the area. Of course, it is a problem. Israel perhaps takes more than its share from the aquifers in the area, but it has moved on with massive desalination projects which are now providing the vast majority of water to Israel. I pray that in that region desalination projects could exist on the coast of Gaza, which the Israelis could help to set up to solve a problem of water that will not be solved by just relying on aquifers.

The problem raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, was about expansion of settlements. As a Jew and a pro-Israeli, I am against the expansion of settlements. They do not help the peace process. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, referred to 500,000 settlers in the settlements, which is true and not true. Half of those are in the three or four large towns just on the wrong side of the 1967 truce line. All those who know about the borders that will arise know that those towns or settlements will be within Israel when the border is finally agreed, with a land swap to the Palestinians from mainland Israel. So we are talking about half that number of settlers. Those settlers should not be there and should not expand their settlements, but let us not quote statistics that are not really true.

People talk about a boycott, but boycotts in this region will help no one. We want to encourage trade, as the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said, and the intellectual knowledge that comes out of Israel that is used in many countries around the world. Consider the heart of Intel computers—the research and development has been in Israel. We should build on such things, not talk about boycotts. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, talked about other problems, perhaps understating the effect of rocket attacks on places such as Sdot and Ashkelon. Those attacks make people feel incredibly insecure.

My questions to the Minister are: have the protests and uprisings affected the politics of the strategic situation? Have they hindered or advanced the ability of the Palestinians, the Israelis, the people in other Arab countries and the other key players in the region to make peace? How has the recent escalation in violence on the Sinai-Israeli border affected the Israel-Palestine-Egypt process? We should be striving for balance in the Middle East, not endorsing one-sided rhetoric or actions from whichever side.