North Africa and the Middle East

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), with my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), adverted to what took place with regard to the liberation of Kuwait. Kuwait was liberated because Margaret Thatcher, together with the President of the United States, decided that the situation could not be allowed to continue.

[Mike Gapes]

John Major.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

John Major, but Margaret Thatcher was also involved.

In the same way, action not words dealt with the situation in the former Yugoslavia. My hon. Friend is right in his conclusion that, if the situation in north Africa is to be solved in any way acceptably, it will be by action, not by continued talk. The world community should hang its head in shame at the prolonged delay to take practical action on behalf of the people of Libya.

Time is very short, indeed, before it becomes too late, but complacent indifference has long dominated the west’s approach towards Gaddafi’s brutality. Even in recent months, the Home Office has insisted deplorably on sending a Libyan asylum seeker back into Gaddafi’s clutches, just as it insists on sending asylum seekers back to Iran. As usual, the United States, under its present Administration, has been vocal about Libya, but words are easy; action is what counts.

In the case of Israel’s transgressions and brutalities, the Americans have been even more shameful. As is his wont, Obama has been long on self-indulgent, vacuous rhetoric, but absent when it comes to meaningful action. Let us witness the illegal Guantanamo Bay torture camp, remaining open two years after he promised that it would close. “Absent”, though, understates Obama’s pernicious policies. When he sought to wheedle the Israelis into a moratorium on settlement building, he promised that if they paused such building he would veto any Security Council resolutions regarded as critical of Israel. The Israelis ignored him, and still he vetoed the recent, otherwise unanimous, Security Council resolution on settlements.

Yet that United States Administration, if they wished, could bring the Israelis to heel, simply by cutting off the supply of arms and economic aid to that rogue country. Economic sanctions on Israel work, as was demonstrated when President Bush senior forced Yitzhak Shamir to talks in Madrid by suspending loan guarantees.

Certainly, when it comes to rogue regimes, the world is long on denunciations but short on action, and it is important to place on the record those transgressions against international law by a country that has one of the most aggressively right-wing regimes in the world. The Israelis have built an illegal wall through occupied Palestinian territory, in many, many cases cutting Palestinians off from their livelihoods, as I have seen for myself recently. The Israelis’ settlements are, again, a violation of international law, yet they expand them. Again, I recently saw for myself how, in Jerusalem and elsewhere, settlers, with the connivance of the Israeli police, throw Palestinians out of their homes and force them to live in tents. Israel’s hundreds of checkpoints on the west bank make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for Palestinians to get to workplaces, schools, universities and hospitals. The Jordanian Foreign Minister told me recently how, when he was travelling with the Palestinian President on the west bank in separate cars, he felt obliged to invite the President to travel in his car, because the President’s own car was continually being stopped at checkpoints.

[Mrs Ellman]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I will proceed for a moment. I think I can anticipate the kind of thing my hon. Friend would say if I were to give way to her. The Israelis kill Palestinians whenever they feel inclined. They have killed two this very week, and the blockade of Gaza—of 1.5 million people—is totally illegal. Rebuilding after the havoc caused by the Israeli invasion has been minimal because of the Israeli embargo on the entrance of many supplies. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency reported to me on the appalling effect on nutrition of the Israeli blockade. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children are growing up malnourished, and that affects both their physical and mental growth. The estimable head of UNRWA, whom I have met several times, says that the alleged easing of the blockade, following the Israeli attack on the flotilla on 31 May, has made the situation worse. He himself has given up and is taking on another assignment outside Palestine. Of course, the Israeli navy does not hesitate to commit piracy in international waters, either.

The Israelis have the most extremist Government in their history, with a Foreign Minister who is actively racist and overtly advocates ethnic cleansing. The Israeli Parliament, elected by proportional representation, which should be a warning to us all about changing electoral systems, now persecutes non-governmental organisations that work for progress and racial harmony.

The Israelis do not believe in a two-state solution and are completely uninterested in any kind of genuine peace process, yet what is being done to curb this regime? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. They get away with it by exploiting guilt over the holocaust. They get away with it by whimpering about their need for security, when they have the strongest armed forces in the region, nuclear weapons and the fourth-strongest armed forces in the world. They get away with it, because Obama, apprehensive about the United States presidential election next year, is scared of Jewish pressure groups in the United States.

The world’s tolerance of the Israeli persecution of 5 million Palestinians is a blot on whatever international morality exists. When Palestinians commit atrocities, as with the murderous attack on the Fogel family of settlers last weekend, there is justifiable anger. Israeli soldiers shot two Palestinian parents dead in front of their children in Gaza, as those children told me: the girl stood there, an Israeli soldier shot her father in the head, and then shot her mother in the head. When things like that happen, nobody bats an eyelid.

We are right to be profoundly concerned about Libya and about the lethal tension in certain Gulf states. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South is absolutely right when he says that if the people of Libya go under, other countries will take that as a lesson that suppressing their populations by force works. This is a very big test for the entire world community. We are right to be vigilant about Tunisia, and right to keep an anxious eye on Egypt to ensure that the revolution there is not baulked or frustrated. But until the world takes action to force Israel to deal justly with the Palestinians, the middle east will remain a turbulent and dangerous region and a blot on all our consciences.