Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

For too long, it seems to me, there has been an idea that dealing with problems in countries such as Syria and Ukraine is a matter for our leaders, while ordinary Back Benchers must follow. Well, that has changed. The history of Iraq shows how badly we were led, principally by Tony Blair and his apparatchiks. Going to war with Iraq was wrong and unnecessary. I am sorry to say that Tony Blair was not straight with this House or with the nation. Never again will we leave such decisions solely to our leaders.

There are three areas of the world over which we have great concerns. If we are not careful, we may get into military action without any clear objective. That has already been attempted—fortunately it failed—in respect of Syria.

In the Holy Land, there is an agreement of sorts between Israel and Palestine. Gaza is not a state, but neither is it allowed by Israel to be part of Palestine. It is ruled by a terrorist organisation, Hamas, with the consequences that we see each day—bombing, rockets and bloodshed. Although there are issues that we, the Egyptians and the Israelis agree on, the Palestinian militants have crackpot ideas, and hundreds of rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel. However, very few people are killed by those rockets, whereas approximately 2,000 innocent civilians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli offensives.

What is needed, as well as a lasting ceasefire, is a workable plan for the crossings into Israel and Egypt from Gaza by both land and sea. Gaza has a smaller land mass than the Isle of Wight but more than 1.8 million residents. Most of them are out of work because businesses can get few of their products out in order to sell them and local people do not have the money to buy things. I, like so many people, am concerned that we must find a more civilised way for innocent people to live, even if a terrorist gang is in charge. It is totally unacceptable that larger and larger developments by the Israelis are forcing many thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

Secondly, in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad no longer has control of the whole of his country. There was a movement in favour of democracy, but that has been overtaken by extremists, including Hamas and the much increased force of the so-called Islamic State, which is still more extreme. It has taken over a third of Syria and has moved into Iraq, murdering men and raping women and children of the Christian faith and other faiths who refuse to convert to Islam.

It is tempting to believe that we and the United States are able to sort that mess out. The trouble is that there is no evidence to suggest that we could achieve that, unless the Syrians and Iraqis start to take action themselves. My conclusion is that there is little that we can do militarily that would be useful. We must encourage the Syrians and the Iraqis to take control of their own destiny.

Finally, in Ukraine, there is a ceasefire for the moment, but it might break down at any time. All but Crimea and three of the areas nearest to Russia are under the control of the Ukrainian people. For the moment, we are standing back. Ukraine is not part of NATO. My fear is that the EU will act as if Ukraine is part of the EU. That would be undemocratic and unacceptable.

All three areas are worrying, but peaceful negotiation is always preferable to war. As Churchill said, jaw-jaw is better than war-war.