Israel and the Peace Process
Debate between Andy Slaughter and Anne McGuire(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Slaughter
I am not sure that that is relevant; I wish I had not given way.
The Palestinian people experience occupation, persecution and discrimination. I wish that some of the rights that Israelis give to their own citizens—some hon. Members have rightly mentioned them—were also provided for the Palestinian people. When considering this issue, the judgment of some hon. Members seems to lapse in a way that it would not in relation to other issues.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has given the example of Operation Cast Lead, in which 1,500 people, the majority of them civilians—many of them women and children—were massacred by bombardment from sea, land and air. I visited Gaza two to three weeks after that happened and saw the devastation that it wrought.
Over the 20 years since Oslo, the number of settlements has doubled from 250,000 to 500,000, irrespective of how the Palestinians were negotiating or of which parties were in government.
Mr Slaughter
No, I will not give way again.
Israel is portrayed as the victim when it is, in fact, a regional superpower, a nuclear-armed state and, above all, an occupying power. It is a power that has occupied a people for longer than anywhere else in the world.
The Minister did not have a chance to answer a question that I asked him during last night’s debate in the House on Jerusalem, so I will ask it again. What stance will the Government take when the Palestinians go to the United Nations, again, in April for recognition? Could the British Government please take a different attitude?
We cannot expect the Palestinians to negotiate while settlements are being built at their current rate. On 18 December, the Israeli housing Minister announced that another 1,000 new settler homes would be built in East Jerusalem. That was a punitive response to Palestine’s admission to UNESCO. How can there be any basis for negotiation when settler violence has gone up by 150% in two years; when Jerusalem is being ethnically cleansed; when there are 5,000 Palestinian prisoners—more than 300 of them in military detention; and when a report, published just last week, said that child prisoners were being tortured and ill-treated in Israeli prisons?
Those are the offences that have to be addressed. It is time that those who rightly support the state of Israel’s being able to live in peace and security, as we all do, opened their eyes to the crimes being committed against the Palestinian people on a daily basis throughout Gaza, the west bank and, indeed, in Israel. Until we have that—