Occupied Palestinian Territories: Israeli Settlements

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Richard Graham

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt]

I agree with the hon. Lady. The implications of these settlements are catastrophic. One should not belittle the seriousness of the issue. As I was saying, settlements are illegal under international law for a reason. One cannot conquer someone else’s territory and then colonise it. The end of that era was codified in the Geneva convention in 1949, and our experience since has been of decolonisation. That it should have happened over the past 50 years at the hands of a nation born out of the moral authority of the appalling treatment of the Jews in Europe over centuries that culminated in the holocaust is deeply troubling for the admirers of the heroic generation that founded the state of Israel.

We rightly talk about all that should be celebrated in Israel, which is often described as a beacon of our shared values in a troubled region, but the truth is that Palestinians, the Arab world and the wider international community, including our own population, increasingly see Israel through the clouded prism of the settlements.

Within Israel, there is no consensus on settlements. The recent regularisation law has raised a particularly rancorous debate. It was Benny Begin, the son of a former Prime Minister and a Likud Member of the Knesset, who dubbed the law as the “robbery law”, while the head of the Zionist Union, Isaac Herzog, called it “a threat” to Israel. It is worth remembering that Parliaments cannot make legal what international law proscribes.

[Richard Graham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the expansion of illegal settlements is to the despair of many people who wish Israel well and plays precisely into the hands of those who believe that there is a cynical intent never to pursue a two-state solution?

[Crispin Blunt]

I wholly agree with my hon. Friend.

It distresses me that, despite the formal reiteration of the British position on settlements, the recent signals from the Government—briefing against the Kerry speech, not participating in the Paris conference and receiving an Israeli Premier who has just presided over the regularisation law and who is in deep domestic trouble— suggest that they do not fully appreciate the seriousness of this obstacle to peace and the threat to the values of a nation that our history of personal, economic and security relationships makes a firm friend and ally. Friends should not allow each other to make profound and damaging mistakes, which is why I support this motion.