Balfour Declaration Centenary

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, for securing this debate and for his very measured introduction of it, and also for his work through the Daniel Turnberg Memorial Fund to bring together medical scientists across the divide in the region and the UK.

This has been a keenly felt debate. The Balfour Declaration favoured,

“the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

A number of noble Lords have clearly marked out Israel’s achievements; others have referred to the terrible history which drove forward the creation of Israel. But the Balfour Declaration also stated that it should be,

“clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

This part of that proclamation remains unresolved. UK Governments and others have long said that they seek a two-state solution, but as the recent House of Lords Select Committee on International Relations noted,

“the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is on the verge of moving into a phase where the two-state solution becomes an impossibility and is considered no longer viable by either side”.

My noble friend Lord Alderdice, with all his experience of Northern Ireland and other conflicts, argued yesterday for a new realism: that the time had already passed for such a two-state solution, with all that this implies. Does the Minister agree? If she does not, how does she think a two-state solution can come about? Is she aware of how long Ministers in her position have been arguing for this? She condemns, for example, as others have here, the expansion of illegal settlements, but they continue apace. How does she think that the second part of the Balfour Declaration can be brought about, so that the rights of both Jewish and non-Jewish communities are on a truly equal footing?

A centenary after the Balfour Declaration, its principles remain to be fully delivered. In a tinderbox region, that has to be a threat to those in Israel, in the Palestinian territories, in the region and far wider.