Israel and Palestine

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, on all sides of the House noble Lords are united in willing peace in the world, whether it be in Israel, Palestine, Syria, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, and also Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran—the list is only too long. Indeed, in the previous parliamentary Session there were no fewer than 706 Questions on Israel and Palestine.

What contribution can and is being made by NGOs and the civil population? Are there instances when NGOs fan the flames rather than promote peace? Peace will come when Palestinian refugees are treated like other refugees in the world. Why are they kept in the state they are in, unlike the millions displaced at the end of World War Two, for example, from Pakistan, Cyprus, India, Germany and Jews from Arab countries? The NGO that militates against peace is the UN Relief and Works Agency—UNRWA. To an outsider, UNRWA seems a humanitarian group helping Palestinian refugees. In reality, it undermines the chances of Arab-Israeli peace and holds Palestinians back from rebuilding their lives. It was set up to take care of the Arabs of the British Mandate. It began with some 700,000 charges and now has more than 5 million. It perpetuates their refugee status, unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that takes care of 50 million refugees with half the budget of UNRWA.

The issue is that UNRWA counts as refugees not only those displaced in 1946-8 but their descendants down to the fourth generation, including many who have never—and whose ancestors never—set foot in Israel and who are not in need. There are actually only 30,000 refugees properly defined under the UN definition of a refugee. The UN definition specifically excludes any person who has acquired a new nationality. UNRWA is the only refugee organisation in the world that considers citizens of another state to be refugees, and includes all descendants of original male refugees. On that basis, there will be a lot of refugees sitting in this House.

However, UNRWA does not push for citizenship in the host countries of others. Its budget is $1.23 billion over two years—98% of which comes from Europe, the US and Canada, while the oil states give only 2%. It has become an industry in itself, with 29,000 employees, overwhelmingly Palestinians, while the UNHCR has a mere 7,600 employees. There is one worker for every 157 Palestinian refugees. It needs reform. By limiting its largesse to those in need it should ensure that it is not partisan and that the children in its schools get a balanced and discrimination-free education and are not taught to hate Israelis and to glorify terrorism and suicide bombings. It should accept, and teach children to accept, the right of self-determination for all people, Israelis as well as Palestinians. In fact, UNRWA’s functions would be better transferred to other UN agencies and to the Palestinian Authority and it would be better if it were dissolved.

I do not have time to mention the noble NGOs other noble Lords have described, but I want to draw attention to the magnificent collaboration going on in medical research, in particular in Ben-Gurion University in Israel where researchers collaborate with Arabs on identifying a defective gene that causes a fatal calcium deficiency in Arab children. Professor Margalith of that university won the Tyler Prize for work on malaria and collaborated with Palestinian and Jordanian scientists to eradicate mosquitoes.

The Government should be spending their cash—and I hope the Minister will answer—on NGOs that work for coexistence, not those that are partisan. What can civil society in Britain contribute? Unfortunately, in the view of some, anti-Semitic language has entered the mainstream of political discourse here. You could argue that Israel behaves in the way she does in part because the lessons learnt from the Holocaust were that she can never rely on the armed strength or support of others. Trying to play down the goal and intention of the Holocaust, as we saw recently, or throwing around the word “apartheid” simply reminds Jews in Israel, and maybe elsewhere, how fragile is the barrier against their destruction in every generation. Support for Israel by churches and politicians here would do more than anything else to encourage Israel to take the brave steps it needs to take—steps that it thinks will endanger its existence.