Relations with the Arab World

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[George Galloway (Bradford West) (Respect)]

The highlight of my parliamentary career is undoubtedly the wonder goal that I scored for the House of Commons football team at the Stretford end at Old Trafford—the Manchester United theatre of dreams. The goal has passed into history, but less well known is the fact that the little inside forward who supplied the final pass, in a move involving the legends Pat Crerand and Sir Bobby Charlton, was the Minister whom I face in today’s debate.

The Minister and I have always had civilised—indeed, friendly—relations. I hope that they survive the next 30 minutes, for I am going to say some pretty harsh things about the Government’s policy. As Minister for the middle east, he will have to come in for his share of criticism, but nothing personal is intended, as I am sure he knows.

The Minister is highly qualified as a Minister of the Crown, but the least of his qualifications was the most important in his being made a Minister at the Foreign Office: he was previously a luminary—indeed, a leader—of the Conservative Friends of Israel. That is an indispensible condition in Britain; in the 25 years I have spent in the House, and I suspect for much longer than that, no one has been able to be the Minister for the middle east without being a member, preferably a leading one, of either the Labour or Conservative Friends of Israel. That is the first problem I want to deal with today.

The fact that one has to be a friend of Israel to be the Minister for the middle east speaks volumes about the absolute unwillingness on the part of the British state, the British Government and the British Parliament to face up to their responsibility to the Palestinian people. The entire tragedy of the Palestinian people was authored in this building, when our Foreign Minister, then Mr Balfour, promised on behalf of one people a second people the land that belonged to a third people, when we did not even own the land of Palestine even as an imperial possession.

That is the original sin of Britain—all the blood that has flowed under the bridge since that declaration was made, and the fact that we do not recognise our special responsibility to the Palestinian people. On the contrary, one has to be a friend of Israel to be the Minister for the middle east. That is central to our problems and our credibility in the middle east.

As a result of Mr Balfour’s declaration, the Palestinian people had their country wiped off the map. We hear a lot of talk in the middle east about people threatening to wipe other people’s countries off the map, but the only country that has been wiped off the map in the middle east is Palestine—go to your atlas, Mrs Brooke, and you will see. The Palestinian people were scattered to the four corners of the earth—stateless, paperless and passport-less, hunted from pillar to post and regularly subject to massacre and attack of one kind or another. All the responsibility for that originates here.

Instead of recognising that special responsibility, we do precisely the opposite. If someone is not a known and celebrated supporter of the country that supplanted Palestine and drove the Palestinians out of their country into the four corners of the earth, they will have no chance of becoming the Minister for the middle east.

I could adumbrate the perfidy at great length, but I do not have the time. I shall give only one example: Israel illegally holds hundreds of nuclear weapons, undeclared and subject to no treaty or inspection of any kind. It was a British Government who transferred the heavy water technology that made that illegal acquisition of nuclear weapons possible; it would have been impossible otherwise. We know that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons because the brave Jewish whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu told us, for which he was kidnapped in Leicester square and ended up serving 18 years in solitary confinement in an Israeli dungeon. When brought to court, his jaws were wired together, like Hannibal Lecter, in case he told us any more about that illegal mountain of weapons of mass destruction.

Israel has a mountain of weapons of mass destruction. Iran has no weapons of mass destruction. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that Iran has no nuclear weapons and that there is no evidence that it is trying to build them. Yet it is Iran that is subject to endless sanction and threat, while Israel has the red carpet endlessly rolled out before it.

Successive British Governments, both Labour and Conservative—the last one were even worse than this one; Mr Blair is now in almost permanent residence in occupied Jerusalem—have consistently backed Israeli crimes or failed to sanction them properly. Even when our own citizens’ passports were stolen by the Israeli intelligence services to commit murder in Dubai and we called in the Israeli ambassador and deported the Mossad representative from the embassy in London, the new Mossad representative to London flew here on the return flight and is ensconced still.

If this was a debate only about Palestine, I would have much more to say, but the proximate cause of my application for this debate is the ludicrous situation that occurred at Prime Minister’s Question Time a couple of weeks ago. The Minister will have come briefed, I am sure, for this point. I asked the Prime Minister whether he would adumbrate for the House the key differences—just the key ones—between the “hand-chopping, throat-cutting” violent, Islamist and extremist jihadists we were now going to Mali to kill, and the hand-chopping, throat-cutting, violent, Islamist, fanatic and extremist jihadists to whom we were giving money to help kill Christians and other religious minorities in Syria. There was a reply, but it was not an answer; it was a brief ad hominem attack—that if there was a brutal Arab dictator anywhere in the world left standing, he could no doubt count on my support.

As psychologists would say, that is just about as good an example of projection as it is possible to imagine. The Prime Minister projected on to me the sins—indeed, crimes—of which he himself is manifestly guilty.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

One of the reasons why I voted against the Iraq war, like the hon. Gentleman, was that I was worried about the fate of Christians in Iraq. They have had a terrible fate since the invasion. Many of them went to Syria, and their lives have been made a misery now; they are the people in between. Does the hon. Gentleman share my view that it is essential that we do not send, or countenance sending, indirectly or directly, any arms into Syria? That would make the situation far worse.

[George Galloway]

I agree wholeheartedly. The Christians in Iraq have effectively been wiped off the map of Iraq. Most of them are in Syria, where they live in daily terror for their churches and of their clergy and devotees being slaughtered by the hand-chopping and throat-cutting al-Qaeda elements to whom we are giving money.

However, the hon. Gentleman is wrong—we are already giving them weapons, and we are giving them money, which is the same as giving them weapons. If we give al-Qaeda money, what do we think they buy with that money? Are they buying Elastoplasts and other medical supplies? No, they are buying weapons with which to terrorise not just Christians, but Muslims and other ethnicities—Kurdish people, for example—on a daily basis. The Minister and the Foreign Office know that, and they must give an answer, if not to me, then to the British people.

What are the differences between the jihadists we are killing in Mali and the jihadists we are financing in Syria? I know why the Prime Minister did not answer my question; there can surely be no logical answer to it, for there are no differences. Al-Qaeda is al-Qaeda, and the al-Qaeda mindset is the al-Qaeda mindset wherever it is found.

I demand an answer to that question. The people in this country deserve an answer—after all, it is their money that is being given. I put a question to the Prime Minister:

“Has the Prime Minister read ‘Frankenstein’, and did he read it to the end?”—[Official Report, 30 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 906.]

Does he not know that Dr Frankenstein’s monster broke free and out of control, which is why it is called a monster?

As a case of projection, the Prime Minister’s response is pretty difficult to beat. In The Guardian, an American journalist by the name of Glenn Greenwald—the day after, if not the day after that—wrote:

“Cameron’s attack on George Galloway reflects the west’s self-delusions. In an act of supreme projection, the British PM accuses a critic of lending support ‘wherever there is a brutal…dictator’: the core policy of the US and UK”.

Who can doubt that?

The Prime Minister has travelled with his sales bag and a retinue of arms salesmen to one brutal Arab dictatorship after another. I do not know where he is today, but it will be a red letter day if he is not trying to sell weapons to a brutal Arab dictator. Saudi Arabia is our best friend in the middle east. We sell billions—tens of billions—of pounds of weaponry to the Saudi dictatorship, some of which is used in other countries. In 2009, the Saudi air force used UK-supplied Tornado fighter bombers in attacks in Yemen, which killed hundreds or possibly thousands of civilians.

The Saudi army is in occupation of its neighbour, Bahrain, where the democracy protesters are daily being gunned down with guns bought from us, by soldiers trained by us. We have a military training mission in Saudi Arabia, the darkest tyranny in the entire middle east. The most brutal dictatorship in the entire middle east is in occupation of its neighbour, killing people because they demand the right to vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

In my answer, I was indicating that a friendship with Israel is not a requirement for the job, which is what he was indicating. I was pointing out that one of his colleagues had held the job without such a qualification. The reason why we did not support the vote, which was not for membership but to advance the cause of statehood for the Palestinian Authority, was that we had explained that what we believed was most in its interest was not a vote at the United Nations at that time. Our commitment to statehood for the Palestinian people in due course is very clear, however, and I reiterate it again today.

Without wishing to stay on that subject, I will briefly cover the others. On Iran’s nuclear programme, Iran is still acting in defiance of multiple International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions, including the most recent resolution adopted last September, and no fewer than six UN Security Council resolutions. The IAEA has expressed its serious concerns about the possible military dimension to Iran’s programme. Anyone who mistakes what is going on in Iran and believes that it is purely peaceful is missing the point. If it is purely peaceful, that is not difficult for Iran to demonstrate. We still hope that it will take the opportunity to do so this year. The IAEA has made reference to the possible military dimension of that programme.

On Syria, the hon. Gentleman again went too far. It is not true that the United Kingdom is supplying al-Qaeda with either money or weapons. I do not believe that to characterise what is happening in Syria as an attack on the Christian minority is accurate. There are jihadists involved. It is the wish of the United Kingdom and our partners to ensure that they are not supplied with weapons. That is why we are so determined to see the success of the Syrian national opposition coalition, so that it has legitimacy and an opportunity to represent the future of Syria in its political transition. We are more than well aware of the danger of jihadists becoming involved in what was originally a clear expression of reform and opinion against the Assad regime. That has turned into something different, because of the length of time that the situation has been unresolved, which is not through lack of effort by the United Kingdom with the United Nations. We are extremely concerned for the Christian minority and for others, which is why there must be an effective rule of law, but it must cover all.

[Mr Leigh]

Can the Minister give me a categorical assurance that no British taxpayer’s money is finding its way to jihadists through indirect means? Money is being given, but not arms, and it may find its way to them. Will he give me that categorical assurance?

[Alistair Burt]

I can give a categorical assurance that it is not the intention of the United Kingdom, in any efforts being made to support the Syrian people, that any money goes to al-Qaeda or any of its acolytes. It would be logically ridiculous of the United Kingdom to do that, which is why we give our support in the way that we do. No one can be absolutely certain about my hon. Friend’s suggestion, but it is absolutely clear that the United Kingdom has no interest in doing that. It is totally contrary to our interests and is not what we are doing. For him to say that that is clearly what we are doing is simply wrong.

I have to finish, because we are running out of time. It is a complex issue with a complex set of relationships. It is essential that we are able to deal with this issue in a way that examines the facts, and polemics sometimes get in the way. The hon. Member for Bradford West and I share a sense of justice for what must happen in the region. The policy objectives that we have set out are not always simple to achieve, but they are clear. I hope that we can continue to debate in a manner that allows the truth to be got to, even though opinion may vary.