Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will make some progress, but I will come back to the right hon. Lady.

The Home Secretary stated in his letter to the shadow Home Secretary:

“Hizballah, as a political entity in Lebanon has won votes in legitimate elections and forms part of the Lebanese Government. It has the largest non-state military force in the country.”

In last January’s debate, the Security Minister said:

“We believe that the best way to weaken Hezbollah in the region and further afield is to have a strong state of Lebanon. The stronger the state of Lebanon, which represents multi-faith groups, has a democracy and Speakers of Parliament and recognises the individual religious minorities in the country, the weaker Hezbollah will be. It is not in our interests to have a weak, fractured Lebanon.” —[Official Report, 25 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 512.]

He is of course correct about that.

I totally appreciate the strong views on this matter, and it has previously been the view of the Foreign Office for many years that the proscription of the political wing, which is part of the elected Lebanese Government, would make it difficult to maintain normal diplomatic relations with Lebanon or to work with the Government there on humanitarian issues, including those facing Syrian refugees in part of the country controlled by Hezbollah. The Home Secretary said in his remarks about ongoing diplomatic engagement with the Government of Lebanon that he would be looking at whether it is compliant with the order. I would appreciate him setting out in more detail how that engagement is to continue.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Ind)]

I just wanted to say to Opposition Front Benchers that British officials can still meet their Lebanese counterparts. As the Home Secretary will perhaps confirm a little later, the explanatory notes to the Terrorism Act 2000 clarify that the arrangement of “genuinely benign meetings” with proscribed groups is permitted. Such meetings are interpreted as those at which the terrorist activities of the group are not promoted or encouraged, for example, a meeting designed to encourage a designated group to engage in a peace process. I think that covers the point that the hon. Gentleman has just made.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am very grateful for the intervention and I am sure the Home Secretary will come back to that in due course. The reason I raised the issue of proscription—

--- Later in debate ---

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Ind)]

May I unequivocally welcome today’s announcement from the Home Secretary? I pay tribute to all those in this House and beyond who have worked long and hard to achieve this result. I would like to thank the cross-party Back-Bench coalition that supported me in the debate I led on this topic in January 2018, despite opposition from both Government and Opposition Front Benchers. In particular, I wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Dame Louise Ellman) for her sterling efforts to ensure proscription and end the annual travesty of the flags of an antisemitic terror group being paraded on the streets of London.

As the Community Security Trust rightly argued last year, the artificial division between Hezbollah’s so-called military and political wings, one that Hezbollah itself denies, was highly damaging to social cohesion and community relations. It is thus very disappointing, but I am afraid not surprising, to hear the words of the Opposition Front Bencher today. I hear that the Opposition are not opposing the order, but I really think they should be supporting it. However, I thank the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) for the listening ear he gave when we met after last year’s debate.

Today’s step is not simply a blow against terrorism and antisemitism; it furthers the cause of peace. Let us be clear that Hezbollah has no desire to be part of any meaningful dialogue or peace process in the middle east. Opposition Front Benchers do not need to take my word for it, because Hezbollah has repeatedly and consistently made its aims and intentions very clear. It vehemently opposed the Oslo peace process and has fought any normalisation of relations between Israel and Arab countries. In its founding manifesto in 1985, Hezbollah says of Israel:

“Our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognise no treaty with it, no cease-fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

On numerous occasions, most notably in 1993, 1996 and 2006, Hezbollah has sought to provoke conflicts with Israel, and it is readying itself for war once again. It now has an estimated 120,000 to 150,000 rockets and missiles—an arsenal larger than that of many states—and an army of 45,000 fighters. At the end of last year, in a further violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701, a number of cross-border terror tunnels were discovered. It is all part of Hezbollah’s plan of attack, called “Conquering the Galilee”, to launch assaults inside Israeli cities and towns, which Hassan Nasrallah publicly boasted about only last month.

It is not just the people of Israel to whom Hezbollah poses a direct threat; it is heavily implicated in the war crimes of Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, having participated in battles in Aleppo and the killing of more than 1,000 civilians in the Ghouta district in the eastern suburbs of Damascus. It has destabilised Lebanon, bringing conflict to its people and murdering its political opponents, and it has conspired with its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps masters to attack western, Israeli and Jewish targets throughout the middle east, Europe and South America.

I know that this is not the direct responsibility of the Home Secretary, but I now urge the Government to do more to work with our allies and friends in the region to counter the pernicious influence of Iran, the barely hidden hand behind Hezbollah and the source of so much of the violence, sectarianism and terror that plagues the middle east.