Gaza

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, I welcome the improvement in access to Gaza to provide humanitarian aid. However, the facts are clear: the people of Gaza are suffering greatly because of the blockade and have to fall back on humanitarian aid, rather than providing for themselves and their families through normal economic activity. In other words, a vicious circle is at work here. The people of Gaza are unable to obtain building materials to repair and maintain their homes, or to reconstruct the seriously damaged infrastructure. They are unable either to import or export enough goods to sustain anything like a normal economic life. As a result, unemployment is greatly increased. Around half of young people are out of work.

My noble friend Lord Warner mentioned fishing. Some 85 per cent of fishing waters, which are an important source of food in Gaza, are inaccessible as a result of the blockade. Such fishing as there is takes place in polluted waters as a result of a deteriorating waste infrastructure. In turn, that has a serious effect on health, including the health of children. Existing treatment plants are inadequate, so large amounts of sewage are discharged into the sea. Nearly one-third of houses are not connected to the sewage network and have to rely on totally inadequate cesspits.

This environment can lead only to an embittered people and, in particular, to large numbers of embittered young men who are denied some of the most basic requirements for human needs. It cannot be conducive to the long-term security of the Israeli people, which I and many others in this House of course want to see, to force these appalling conditions on the Palestinians of Gaza. I ask the Minister in his reply to say what Her Majesty’s Government are doing—of course, working with Israel and the international community—to seek a change in this policy so that vital improvements to the infrastructure, which continues to deteriorate, can be secured.