Occupied Palestinian Territories

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts
Thursday 24th September 2020

(3 years, 6 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jerome Mayhew Portrait Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
- Hansard - -

I am a supporter of the state of Israel. I am a supporter of its creation and our role in achieving it, a supporter of its flourishing within the region, and a supporter of its robust and thriving democracy in a region where democracy does not thrive. I am a supporter of its place in the international community of nations, and of its culture, religion, dynamism and growth. But that considerable admiration does not blind me to the areas where Israel has failed to live up to its international obligations, and where its actions have worked against the global need for peace in the middle east.

Settlements are just one of many issues that stand in the way of peace, and a three-minute speech is not the place to discuss the issues of the middle east. However, there is nothing in building settlements in the occupied settlements that encourages the prospect of a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. If we believe that a long-term peace accord relies on the creation of an agreed two-state solution, how can a Government policy of ongoing building of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories do anything other than make a long-term division of lands less achievable? Yet such a peace agreement would massively benefit Israel, as well as the nascent Palestine. Surely the Israeli Government’s current plans to annexe the west bank throws up yet another barrier to the kind of peace that both protagonists and the wider international community purport to support.

I welcome the peace agreements between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain, and I hope that they presage an increased impetus for more normalised relations throughout the region, giving greater impetus to the opportunity for peace. The suspension of the annexation plans, at least for the time being, is an early example of the positive impact of those agreements. It is through the normalisation of relations, and dialogue, rather than assertive acts of annexation in defiance of international law, that the progress we all crave will be achieved.

On the current Israeli-US peace plan, one only needs to turn to the map of the proposed Palestinian state to see that, at best, it can only be the start of a conversation, which perhaps it should be. The proposed state does not look like a state, but rather an internal diaspora of enclaves. We know from the history of the past 50 years that the weeping sore of low-grade attritional conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will not be settled by the imposition of one side’s solution on the other. Equally, peace cannot be imposed from the outside. The only way that peace will come is from the free agreement of both parties, supported and facilitated by their international friends. I support Her Majesty’s Government as they continue to promote just such a solution.