Israel and the Peace Process

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I say what an unexpected pleasure it is, Mr Walker, to be serving under your chairmanship for the first time today and how delighted I am to have secured this important debate? It is pleasing to see such a good attendance today, especially as the House is about to rise for the Easter recess. I will try to be brief, as many Members wish to speak.

The best political debates are often driven by simple arguments. The Member whose debate it is rises and cuts through a confusing mass of factors and statistics, and then sits down. Everyone then wonders why they have not considered such an obvious and compelling solution before. I am afraid that we will not have one of those debates today.

A false sense of clarity and simplicity risks holding back the international community from making the most positive contribution that it can to the middle east. Over the next 90 minutes, I hope that we can draw out some of the hidden complexity of a situation that is all too often portrayed in black and white terms over here. Many Members will want to set out their own experiences of visiting the region and give their own perspective on the prospects for peace. That was one of the principal reasons that drove me and my hon. Friends to call for this debate today.

First, it is important to set Israel’s place in the middle east, and thus the importance of the peace process, in its proper context. We often hear two polar positions, often simultaneously, and they are both wrong. Both are fuelled by a two-dimensional view of the region that gets filtered through the media here.

On the one hand, we hear that the lack of lasting peace in Israel is inextricably linked to everything else in the middle east and has been the central catalyst of all the unrest in the region for decades. That view has led to the belief that if only the Israelis and Palestinians could agree, all other troubles in the region would melt away. That view was always hard to justify in a region that saw an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq and where regional minorities such as the Kurds have been consistently marginalised and oppressed. The Arab spring surely, finally, explodes the myth of the ubiquity and centrality of Israel in middle east affairs.

On the other hand, there is the view that Israel is an impregnable island that is prosperous, supported by the west and secure in its own borders. It is the plucky hard man to its sympathisers and the oppressor state to its detractors.

However, after a visit to the region, we can appreciate that this is a tiny nation that is bordered on all sides by states that are at best ambivalent and at worst hostile to its very existence. The existential threat to Israel consists not only of the rockets that are fired daily across its southern borders, but of the nuclear ambitions of Iran. It is not a country that is secure within its own borders. Certainly, if that level of threat were posed to the UK, we would not ignore it.

Israel has reached out to its neighbours where it could. Anxiety over the events of the Arab spring led not to a reaction against the welcome prospect of greater democracy across the middle east, but to an uneasiness that the fragile accommodation with its neighbours could be lost in the chaos and uncertainty of those months. It is a country that is focused on reaching out now. In 2011, Israel exported goods worth some $6 billion to its neighbours in the middle east and north Africa. It joined in a campaign with the Palestinian Authority and the Jordanian Government to have the Dead sea declared as one of the seven wonders of the natural world. Such examples show that, at its best, it can work constructively with its neighbours.

Conversely, although Israel is acutely aware of its deep connection to the countries that surround it, it is not prepared to subcontract its basic need for security to anyone. Above all, its innate quest for security has gone hand in hand—from its inception to the present day—with a deep commitment to the progressive values that we hold dear in this country, especially on the Opposition Benches. It is a country where women enjoy equality; the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community flourishes; there is a free press; the powerless are protected from the powerful by an independent judiciary; trade unions are well-organised and strong; educational excellence and scientific innovation are pursued; religious minorities are free to practise their creeds; a welfare state supports the poor and marginalised; and there is a fully functioning, vibrant, participatory democracy.

It would be absurd to suggest that Israel is loved across the middle east. Yet as we look at the hope and uncertainty generated by the Arab spring, the freedoms enjoyed by Israelis are inescapable to anyone in the region with access to the internet and social media. When millions across the middle east are desperate for leaders they can hold to account, Israel’s robust media and the tough stance it regularly takes to senior figures is a genuine beacon for those values.

Alongside the threat of rocket attacks still experienced by Israeli citizens, there is, of course, a real sense of injustice among many Palestinians in Gaza and the west bank. There is grinding economic hardship and rampant unemployment across huge swathes of the population. The genuine fear that the advancing settlements could prove permanent, the claims to return and concerns about integration for Israeli Arabs fuel the frustration at the lack of progress in the peace process. The Palestinians’ suffering and sense of injustice are prolonged with every passing month in which their dream of statehood is not realised.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

In my hon. Friend’s discussion about the injustices towards the Palestinians, what does he say to the accusation against Israel of the imprisonment of Palestinian elected parliamentarians and the continued denial of their right to travel to the west bank to take part in the parliamentary democracy of Palestine?

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend raises a valid point. Israel has taken measures to protect its security in several areas, which has caused deep discomfort to many people in Israel and here. What I am trying to set out in this speech is the context in which some of these decisions are taken.

Viewing from a distance often gives the impression that the principal blockage to lasting justice for both Palestinians and Israelis has been the intransigence of a dominant state, secure in its borders and willing to let every opportunity for peace limp by. If we are to promote peace effectively rather than act as a drag on it, we need to expose that analysis as flawed on every count.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I will be brief, Mr Walker, so that the Front-Bench representatives have time to respond. I am grateful for this debate and hope that it will lead to a full day’s debate on the Floor of the main Chamber, because enormous issues are involved.

I have visited Palestine and Israel on many occasions and would characterise Palestinians as under occupation, under siege or in exile. Having visited many Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere, I have felt the sense of anger, hopelessness and depression that people who, along with their grandparents, parents and now their own children—great-great grandchildren—have spent 60 years in refugee camps thirsting for the right to go home. They have been living in poverty, under oppression and with a sense that, for many generations, whole lives have been lived in limbo.

I recall meeting those who were removed from Palestine in 1948 and who went to the Gulf states and Iraq. They were eventually moved out of Iraq into Syria, and I met them languishing on the border between Iraq and Syria. Have a thought for how they feel, think and look at the world. Have a thought for the plight of the 1.5 million people in Gaza who are effectively in imprisonment and cannot travel to the west bank or Jerusalem. Some are elected parliamentarians who cannot go anywhere. Have a think about them and about what the situation does to the psyche of young people growing up in imprisonment, unable to do anything other than watch the world on TV and computer screens. That is the reality for many Palestinians.

Some talk blithely about the need for negotiations and for promoting a two-state solution, which is fine, but look at the criss-cross roads all over the west bank, and look at the settlements and at the water that has gone. I applaud what my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) has said about the need for an ecological approach to the River Jordan. We could start by not abstracting all the water from it, a practice that is leading to the Dead sea disappearing, literally, before our very eyes.

The march for Jerusalem will take place this month. The campaign is calling on the British Government to do a number of things and I would be grateful if the Minister said what support they can give it. The campaign wants to stop the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem; stop the building of illegal settlements and their structures; stop the granting of discriminatory and insecure residency rights to Palestinians and their arbitrary expulsion from that city; and stop the expulsion of many from Jerusalem. Homes in Silwan have been destroyed to make way for the city of David.

[Mr McCann]

Will my hon. Friend ask for those who are firing missiles into southern Israel to stop? His list will be incomplete if he does not put that part of the picture in place.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have never supported anybody who fires rockets at someone, but I ask my hon. Friend to get a sense of reality and to compare rockets with the 1,500 people who were killed during Operation Cast Lead, when F16 jets using phosphorous bombs killed innocent women and children. I am not in favour of rockets or bombing. We will achieve peace only if there is real recognition of the rights of and injustices suffered by the Palestinian people. That includes ending the settlement policy, ending the occupation of East Jerusalem, and ending the whole policy of the expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

Israel is a very rich and very powerful nuclear-armed state situated in a region where it is in a position to threaten any of its neighbours at any time. I suggest that the way forward in the region is to end the injustice suffered by the Palestinian people, end the occupation of the west bank and the imprisonment of the people of Gaza, and allow those who have been stuck in refugee camps for so long to return home.

[Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

No, I will not.

Britain was involved in the original partition and in the Balfour declaration, so we have a duty to help promote peace. That means suggesting to Israel that leaving the United Nations Human Rights Council, running away from international institutions and opposing Palestinian membership of the UN are hardly an indication of a process of peace, or of recognition of or respect for international law. They are very much the opposite.

If Israel cannot abide by international law and if it continues to abuse human rights and imprison Palestinians, why is the European Union-Israel trade agreement carrying on as normal, as though there is nothing wrong? That agreement has a human rights clause and that clause should be respected. We should, therefore, enter negotiations and tell Israel that if it cannot abide by the trade agreement’s human rights clause, the agreement itself will be suspended.

[John Woodcock]

rose—