Refugees: Mass Displacement

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to hear the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths. While thanking my noble friend Lord Alton for this opportunity, I will focus on the Palestinian refugee crisis that culminated in the creation of Israel in 1948 and has continued ever since.

The Motion today includes the phrase “root causes”. In the case of Palestine, we have to go back many centuries but after 1945 Britain, alongside other European powers, had the responsibility to encourage the two communities to live together. We failed miserably, at a cost to our own soldiers and police at the hands of the Zionists. This story is easily forgotten today alongside many other dramas. Today, there are still 6 million to 7 million refugees from that period, plus over 700,000 displaced people.

The worst massacres, such as at Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948, were carried out by the ruthless Irgun and Stern gangs; in response, the Palestinians have developed their own brands of resistance and terrorism, now incorporated in the military wing of Hamas. The UN’s right to return concept has been ignored. Most of these refugees remain in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, apart from those abroad or internally displaced. I was at Christian Aid at the time of the Shatila and Sabra massacres, mentioned by my noble friend, and I well remember the horror we felt in the aid agencies as we scrambled to help with medical teams.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza still live under foreign occupation after 73 years. They depend to a great extent on the services provided by UNRWA, the UN agency designated to help them. But their situation is worse than that of refugees, in the sense that they are treated as second-class citizens, shuttled between barriers and barbed wire and wholly dependent on Israel for permissions. They are often left without a means of livelihood; they also have to live in diminishing space. Recently, I watched a video showing abandoned Palestinian villages overshadowed by Israeli settlements and streets where the two communities live divided by the wall, one of them overlooked by watchtowers as in a prison camp. Progressive demolition of houses in favour of new settlements continues.

Many NGOs and human rights agencies are making the case for Palestinians, including some within Israel. However, the Israeli Government have recently outlawed half a dozen local NGOs as agents of terrorism, and the UK has unwisely decided to proscribe the political wing of Hamas. In my view, our present Government are going backwards and urgently need to rebuild our reputation as a state wishing to see justice for the Palestinians. I should say at this point that my wife is chair of PalMusic UK, a charity that helps Palestinian musicians. It has perennial problems in obtaining all the necessary permits to allow musicians to travel, even within and between Palestinian territories.

Now that we have left the EU, are we not falling back in influence in the Middle East? Have we abandoned the two-state solution altogether and what is the UK position on the so-called Abraham accords, which draw a few Arab states into economic and, above all, security arrangements with Israel? The Biden Government have not so far stepped back from these agreements, although in September Mr Kushner feared that if they

“are not nurtured, we run the risk that they could go backward.”

The Minister will know more about this, so I would be grateful if he could share the information.