Gaza (Humanitarian Situation)

Andrew Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I initiated this debate because during the last International Development questions I was struck by the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan), the International Development Minister—he is not here today because he is on a ministerial visit to Nepal—who said:

“The collapse in the supply of fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza in recent months and the rising price of food are exacerbating the already precarious humanitarian situation caused by restrictions on the movement of goods and people and the devastation of the winter storms.”

He went on to say that he had been in the Palestinian Territories the previous week and had spoken

“directly to a number of people in Gaza. The shortage of drugs is a serious issue, and that has been the case since about 2007. DFID is supporting the UN access co-ordination unit to work with the World Health Organisation, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the agencies to help to facilitate the transfer of medical equipment and supplies, and patient referrals, in and out of Gaza.”

He then made a stark prediction:

“It is no exaggeration to say that, come the autumn, Gaza could be without food, without power and without clean water. One UN report predicts that it could become an unliveable place, meaning that it risks becoming unfit for human habitation.”—[Official Report, 22 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 279.]

I visited Gaza twice some years ago during the 2001 to 2005 Parliament, when I chaired the Select Committee on International Development. One visit was under the auspices of Christian Aid, and it is worth remembering that there are Christians among the Palestinians. Palestinian Christians are a minority among Palestinians, and Palestinians are a minority in the middle east, so Palestinian Christians often feel that they are twice a minority and consequently doubly powerless at controlling their own lives. My second visit was with the whole Select Committee as part of an inquiry into DFID support for the Palestinian Territories.

During my chairmanship of the International Development Committee and my period as a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister, when the FCO still had responsibility for international development and what was then called the Overseas Development Administration, I saw many terrible tragedies—some from acts of nature, some as a consequence of human folly and some as a combination of both. They ranged from witnessing first hand the horrors of the famine in Ethiopia in 1984 to visiting the camps for refugees and internally displaced people in Darfur.

What distinguished Gaza and struck me was the total sense of hopelessness among ordinary people there. One small example struck a chord. My great-grandfather was a market gardener, and Gazan farmers tried to make a living by growing strawberries; they sought to maximise the potential of what little land they had by erecting greenhouses. They were not allowed to export the strawberries as Palestinian strawberries, but at the time they were at least able to export them. Sadly, almost all their greenhouses were destroyed by the Israeli army. After my second visit, I recall returning home and telling my children that I had no fear of death and I had been to hell, or rather that I could not imagine a state of existence or purgatory of such total hopelessness as being trapped in Gaza.

The Chamber may recall that, back in 2012, the Prime Minister urged Israel’s then Prime Minister to “do everything possible” to end the crisis in Gaza. As far back as July 2010, the Prime Minister described Gaza as a “prison camp” and appealed to the Israeli Government to allow the free flow of humanitarian goods and people out of the Palestinian Territories.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and my near neighbour for giving way, and congratulate him on securing this vital debate. He has experienced those visits and the horrors he is describing so eloquently. Why does he think the international community has proved so ineffective at putting effective pressure on Israel to relax the horrific stranglehold on Gaza? What steps does he think could be taken now?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

To answer the right hon. Gentleman and my neighbour, I think the international community has for a long time put its hope in the negotiations for a two-state solution. I will speak about that towards the end of my comments.