Middle East and North Africa

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Friday 11th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on having the foresight to schedule this debate for today. Despite my noble friend Lord Wallace’s exhortations, I commend the Minister for making it non time-limited. There are 22 countries in the region, which are all going through tremendous change. We seldom debate them in this manner without time limits, and it is important to give those countries the due weight they deserve.

Much has been said in the past few days about the historic events that we are witnessing. On these Benches, like in other parts of the House, there is deep frustration that the will of the Egyptian people remains thwarted by the intransigence of a dictator who cannot see that his days are over. While there is still considerable uncertainty about how events will unfold in the wider region, it is true that the region will not be the same again. We must hope that the transition to democracy, which will surely come to Egypt at some point, does so in non-violent and peaceful circumstances. We can also predict that a difficult period lies ahead. Alexis de Tocqueville said:

“Despots themselves do not deny that freedom is excellent; only they desire it for themselves alone, and they maintain that everyone else is altogether unworthy of it”.

That is the flavour of the struggle ahead.

There has been a sense in political circles that these events have come upon us unexpectedly and that somehow the expression of frustration on the Arab street is a new phenomenon. It is not. I arrived in Saudi Arabia in early 1973, before the Egyptian-Israeli war and subsequent oil embargo. I then lived in Lebanon and Egypt, and have travelled to almost all the countries of the region. While oppression and autocracy had been the unifying factor across the different countries of the region, the man on the street always had a healthy disregard for his rulers. However, the “curse of oil”, combined with social and communal binds, and social conformity, have always made meaningful change difficult.

Successive Arab Human Development Reports—I pay tribute to my noble friend’s predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown, who during his time at the UNDP instituted those extraordinarily well researched, Arab-driven reports—have shown that despite grave obstacles the region has changed and its people are embracing modernity with zeal. Education has broadened horizons, the internet has liberated the people and sheer demographics have given them sufficient numbers to have found a voice. Arab exceptionalism—the notion that people everywhere, bar the Arabs, can embrace political empowerment—looks as though it has come to an end.

However, there has always been more to Arab compliance with misrule than simple submission. This is a region that has been the plaything of empires for centuries. We in Britain have too often been on the wrong side of history. From the naivety of Arthur Balfour in 1917 to the ill-fated Anglo-Iraqi treaty of the 1920s, and from our attempts to leverage power in Egypt between the King and the Wafd—which sowed the seeds for the 1952 revolution—to our subsequent handling of the Suez crisis, such events have left an unhappy legacy.

However, the major power in the Middle East in contemporary history has of course been the US. It has for far too long been swayed by the supposed belief in the illusion of stability over freedom, democracy and justice. There has been more than a sense of irony in the past few weeks about the knee-jerk reaction by Israel and Saudi-Arabia—both client states of the US: one a democracy and the other an autocracy—stressing that stability and mutual defence of a dictator is more important than democracy. When one sets about supporting “moderate” Arab leaders, as the US, Israel and to a lesser degree Europe have done, we fail to see a contradiction. What sort of world do we live in where cruel rights-abusing dictatorships are deemed to be moderate? I suspect that Khalid Said’s mother, whose son was brutally murdered last year for exposing corruption in Egypt, would not see much moderation in the Egyptian security service’s treatment when she saw the body of her son in the morgue.

Turning to the present day, two major factors that continue to make this region the most unstable in the world are linked. The first, now almost a hundred years since the Balfour declaration, is the lack of resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. From this flows such a strong sense of injustice across the entire Muslim world that it undermines the West’s relations with some 1.3 billion people on this planet. While Britain and the EU have only walk-on parts in this sorry tale, our inability to impress on our partner, the US, that it should embark on an even-handed, just and equitable solution marks an ongoing and significant failure of British and EU foreign policy.

I travelled to Israel and Palestine a few days ago with a parliamentary delegation organised by the Council for Arab-British Understanding. We saw the ongoing encroachment of Israeli settlers in West Bank areas B and C, and the families displaced by settlers in Hebron and in East Jerusalem; and we encountered the loss of hope of a generation of young Palestinians. Within a few days of our return, we learnt from the Al-Jazeera leaks of the extent to which Palestinian negotiators had handed over to the Israelis all their prized possessions and rights: the right of return, an entrenchment of illegal settlements and an agreement to maps that were so non-contiguous that the notion of a viable state was no more real than in the Bantu states of apartheid South Africa. Yet none of this was enough, in the eyes of the Israeli negotiators, to sue for peace.

What are the prospects for a peaceful transition to democracy in the Middle East? There will have to be a solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. This will inevitably involve talking to Hamas; peace without that will be impossible. If we recoil in horror at the prospect, let us be clear that Hamas is not Islamist in conventional terms. It does not wish to see a theocratic state on a literalist interpretation of medieval Islam. It comprises doctors and engineers as well as mullahs. It is a pluralist party; 25 per cent of its ruling council comprise professionals educated in the West, with western notions of governance and administration. It is not a proxy for al-Qaeda; it fights al-Qaeda on the ground in Gaza. We should also recall that we do not need to make peace with friends; it is our enemies with whom we have to sit down at the table. We have held our noses and done so with former terrorists in Northern Ireland, and we have seen the fruits of bringing dissenters into the fold.

I turn to the concern that if we support democracies in the Middle East we will end up with wild, sabre-rattling theocratic states. First, it is a profound misunderstanding of the region to equate the Muslim Brotherhood with pure Salafism, or Hezbollah with the Iranian theocracy. The brotherhood is not ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Lebanon is not Iran. However, there is little doubt that democracy in the Middle East will result in the winning of votes by religious parties. This may well mean that some countries will be less friendly to the West. That may be a short-term setback, but there will be longer-term dividends from having been true to our values. The long-standing perception of double standards will no longer apply and we will be able to pursue our self-interest in the region on the basis of mutual respect as well as mutual interest.

In conclusion, we cannot know where this quest for freedom will take the people of Egypt. Our hopes and prayers must be that they will obtain their freedom without further bloodshed. President Obama said last night:

“The Egyptian people have made it clear that there is no going back to the way things were: Egypt has changed, and its future is in the hands of the people. Those who have exercised their right to peaceful assembly represent the greatness of the Egyptian people”.

It is our duty to support those who seek a peaceful transition to good constitutional governance across the region. That should be the thrust of our foreign policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I fear that the noble Lord was not listening carefully to my remarks. I am absolutely no apologist for anyone who seeks the destruction of Israel. It is for Israel’s survival that I urge that it sits down and talks to its opponents. As I made very clear in my comments on Northern Ireland, we have to do so with people who we do not like on the whole.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

The noble Baroness refuses to acknowledge that neither will recognise Israel in any form or shape, which in my view is an absolute prerequisite to any substantial peace talks.

Sadat sought to achieve long-term peace in contrast to what Hamas and Hezbollah are trying to do. If things go awry, Israel will be surrounded by hostile forces that far outnumber its own defence force. The fact that Israel and Egypt have upheld, through years of enmity and upheaval in the region, a peace agreement is a testament to the fact that Arabs and Jews can co-operate. If the example of Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat were to be emulated, not only peace but prosperity could enhance the fortunes of both peoples and there is no doubt that the poorer Arab sectors of society would benefit most.

Certainly, we must give the movement for Arab democracy a chance. Perhaps that is best achieved by non-interference on the part of the West. This uprising demonstrates that the majority of Egyptians are becoming active and vocal in that cause. But, of course, we cannot underestimate the dangers inherent in the current situation.

One focus for helping to promote stability in the region is the peace process—albeit that it is all too sluggish—between Israel and Palestine at present. To achieve peace, Israel must always demonstrate a strong commitment to justice through its independent judiciary, which is the only one in the Middle East. It has not hesitated to bring its former President to face a situation in the courts and a cover-up cannot be entertained. A peaceful solution is certainly worth the abandonment of the policy of expanding settlements and, to be fair to Israel, it has in the past uprooted some altogether.

At the risk of creating enmity within, let us not forget that in 2005, Israel withdrew 8,000 of its citizens from Gaza and the West Bank. But now, at this perilous time, both sides must strive ever increasingly. While the settlements may have served a defensive purpose at the outset, in many instances they have been hijacked by those with messianic fervour born out of centuries of feeling outcasts.

Iranian influence in a malign way cannot be overstated. The clamour for Islamic jihad from inside that country, the suppression of opponents and the obscene attacks on its foes play a huge part in subverting peace. It encourages the training of suicide bombers who wreak havoc on innocent civilians without conscience or concern. Meanwhile, Iran supports Hamas in maintaining rocket attacks on Israeli citizens designed to kill, even if they do not always succeed.

Of course, Israel, like all democracies, makes mistakes. Some have grave consequences. But Israel cannot make territorial concessions that can be interpreted as a sign of weakness. To achieve enduring peace, stability is essential and, as ever, risks have to be taken for this to happen. Peace is of course elusive, but it has to be pursued even more vigorously than it is at the present time or the alternatives of extremism and terror will prevail. It follows, therefore, that particularly during this vastly troubled time, the voices of hate should not drown out those of desperation, yearning above all for a peaceful settlement.

Having said that, I also join with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, in hoping that trade will replace much of the toxicity which threatens to engulf so many.