Palestine: United Nations General Assembly Resolution

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I had something of a conversion experience, I suppose it might be called when, like many, I went to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza for the first time in 2001. Up to that point I had read of the declining circumstances in Palestine, but I was and remain inexorably concerned about the security of Israel. For my whole adult life I have been an inveterate supporter of that country. I am a huge admirer of Israel in all sorts of ways, just as I am of the Jewish community in this country. It was not necessary for my noble friend Lord Palmer of Childs Hill to remind us of the philanthropic tendencies of Jews. In this country they have an unrivalled record of philanthropy. The tragedy is that a great country and a great people have so demeaned themselves and behaved in a manner that is not just contrary to international law but contrary to simple morality and decency that I genuinely believe that they are now on a suicide path. They are losing former friends and, I suspect, ordinary citizens across the world in droves. That is a tragedy.

I was so committed to the survival of Israel that the only time I have ever offered to fight for anyone was in 1973. I wrote to the Israeli embassy here, but fortunately for me the state of Israel was rather effective at rebutting the attack and I was not called up. When I first went to the region I could not believe my eyes. Anyone in the House who has not been there and who doubts the horrors of both the West Bank and Gaza should go. I am always surprised at how many of my Jewish friends have not been to either of those places, but in a sense I do not blame them because I think they realise how unhappy it would make them to do so. I have been four or five times over the past decade, and I always work with Jewish charities and marvel at how brave and brilliant they are. I would mention Ir Amin, B’Tselem, Machsom Watch and a number of others. Machsom Watch is comprised of 500 middle-class Jewish women who go out on rota every day to stand at the checkpoints and observe the conduct towards the humiliated and harassed Palestinians, and at night they put what they have seen on the web. What a restraint that is. A woman who took me to a checkpoint said that she was called in by one of the commanding officers. He said, “We are both Jews and we should not be arguing about this”, but then she noticed on the wall behind his head a sign that read, “Our task is to make life as impossible for the Palestinians as we can”. That about says it all.

I turn to the circumstances prevailing in Gaza. We hear a lot about Israel getting out of Gaza and the Gazans messing up their opportunities. Well, for the majority of those concerned, getting out of Gaza was very much a utilitarian decision. Maintaining 8,000-plus settlers in Gaza was simply beyond the scope of the state of Israel and was counterproductive. Today, the situation is appalling. I will read out some statistics that I have dug out. According to UNWRA, 38% of Gazans are poor, 44% are food insecure, and 80% depend upon food aid. Gazan poverty is the world’s worst, but the only one created deliberately. The blockade has caused 17% more Gazans to be in the poorest category since 2005. More than a third of them—and more than half the young people—are unemployed. Hundreds of factories stand idle and they produce exports only at the rate of 3% of the level before the trouble. Eighty-five per cent of their fishing grounds and 35% of their agricultural land cannot be accessed because of restrictions. Eighty-five per cent of schools are run on double shifts, because others have been bombed. Ninety per cent of the water is contaminated. It is rather ironic that my noble friend talked about the prowess of Israel in water production when it has decimated the water supply in Gaza. As a result, over 50% of children have chronic diahorrea. Gideon Levy, in an article in Haaretz in July, told of the way water is used in the West Bank as a tool of colonisation. He wrote this dreadful account:

“The Civil Administration is supposed to take care of the people's needs. But it does not stop at the most despicable measure—depriving people and livestock of water in the scathing summer heat—to implement Israel’s strategic goal: to drive them from their lands and purge the valley of its non-Jewish residents”.

One needs at this point to repeat—and go on repeating—that Israel is split from top to bottom. One quarter to one-third of Israelis, by other people’s calculations, are totally opposed to what is going on in Palestine. Would that they were sitting here and speaking on the side of all, or most, of the speakers tonight. I have met some of these people, and they are brave, because they are subject to huge pressure. They are called self-hating Jews, I believe.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, said—absolutely rightly—that our Government have employed double standards towards Israel for decades, and it has got worse, not better. Thank goodness that after this latest scandal of, I think, 3,000 new colonists in East Jerusalem cutting East Jerusalem off from the West Bank by the E1 block, the Foreign Secretary has at last come out with a firm statement. I have been in this House since 2008, and I cannot tell you the number of times that we have had statements from spokesmen from Governments of all persuasions which add up to nothing. There is never any action. My feeling is that action is not just in the interests of the Palestinians or of peace in the Middle East, let alone in the wider world, it is in the interests of Israel itself. That is what drives me on this issue and makes me unwilling to hedge about and avoid the charges of anti-Semitism which always follow plain speaking on this subject, I am afraid to say.

I feel passionately that our Government, having made a start at what I call plain speaking in relation to plain facts, should pursue that path and if necessary be independent of the United States, which is in a particular relationship with the huge and powerful Jewish community there, as the noble Lord, Lord King, vividly explained. We must be independent and do what we think is right for Israel, the Palestinians, the Middle East and the peace of the world. If we do that, a lot of people in Palestine will listen to us.

In 2006, I had a meeting with Dr Ismail Haniyeh, one of the hate figures, who is the leader of Hamas in Gaza. I have to say I was immensely impressed by the man. Unless I have lost all my touch for understanding the reactions of people, I was impressed. I spent an hour with him man to man. He is dying for an opening and for some encouragement because he never gets a dividend for anything Hamas does, except more colonisation and more repression. There is hope to be had if we as a country can be brave with our policy, and I hope that the Government will carry on from where they now are.