Palestine

Debate between Alistair Burt and Michael McCann

Monday 1st December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I thank you, Mr Pritchard, for your chairmanship, and I thank the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) for bringing forward the motion. He already made a significant contribution to the issue with the motion he proposed a couple of weeks ago.

An insightful article in Prospect magazine recently concluded:

“As one senior British official put it: ‘This is barely anymore about who is more right or who is more to blame. The question is where this is going for Israel, as well as the Palestinians, if the years continue to pass and there simply is no deal.’”

For more than 30 years, I have been a friend of Israel; I will not stop now. Israel needs its friends today as much as ever. I have perhaps not been a friend of Palestine in quite the same way. The last four years have enabled me to address that without, I hope, losing other friends.

I open my few remarks with a plea that it is time for us to search harder for an end to the polarisation that means we are either on one side or the other. We should widen that sense of friendship and support those seriously searching for a peaceful end to this long-running tragedy, whoever’s side they are on. We need to speak out continually for all those disadvantaged every day by the fact that there is no end to the dispute. They are on all sides—they are the victims of violence from a missile or from a bloody and wicked murder; the families who grieve; and those who despair of their children and grandchildren facing the same fate, of a conflict-riddled land, seemingly for ever.

[Mr McCann]

Does the right hon. Gentleman despair, as I do, that although even today we all say that we want to go in the same direction of a two-state solution, the inevitable undercurrent of different views in this place and in the middle east prevents us from getting to that destination of peace?

[Alistair Burt]

It is hard to get away from the history. We need to know the history, but it is a burden as well as an intelligence. If this matter is to be settled, some people have to rise above the history to get through the despair. It is an appropriate time—the events of the summer have given rise to yet another spike in extremist action on either side of the divide. Those actions threaten to make life yet worse and more ominous for all, as if it could be.

What could help the process? First, we need unequivocal condemnation of violence and murder from both sides—from the President of the Palestinian Authority and from the Prime Minister of Israel. In light of the fear that the increasing numbers of sectarian murders will add yet another element to the tragedy, which culminated, for now, in the abhorrent synagogue attack, it would be a good time for them to meet. They should physically stand together and say, “No more.”

Secondly, while there can be neither equivocation on nor justification of such murders, it would be a good time for each side to examine what can be done in their name to scale back all the elements that have contributed to a rise in tension and assisted in the failure of the Kerry talks. Those elements include the Palestinian Authority taking seriously the incitement against Israelis and stopping it; unequivocal condemnation of the reaction of Hamas and others to the synagogue and other Jerusalem killings; and no new actions on international recognition and activity, to which Israeli and US reaction would be obvious and unproductive. On the Israeli side, there needs to be a swift end to the threats on the Temple Mount and the holy mosque and a restoration of the status quo there. There needs to be an end to new settlement announcements and to the thoughts of new legislation on comparative rights for Arab and Jewish citizens in Israel, which was condemned here and by many voices in Israel.

Palestine and the United Nations

Debate between Alistair Burt and Michael McCann

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)]

Following the recent terror attacks on southern Israel and the storming of the Israeli embassy in Egypt, does the Minister agree that what Israel needs now is partners and peace on the ground rather than being isolated at the UN?

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Gentleman makes a sharp point. The situation in the middle east has changed, not only over months but over weeks. It increases the sense of urgency with which this Government are approaching these next few days and our determination to say to both parties that, in the midst of such instability and concern, what an extraordinary event it would be to go away from the United Nations with something that the international community was confident would lead to progress and in respect of which both sides could accept that they had gained something and would therefore want to respond to the international situation of concern and the need for urgency. That is what we would like to seek.