West Bank (Area C)

John Denham Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Slaughter]

Absolutely. Occupation does that in its own right, but this is not a benign occupation. This is violence. It has accelerated with an increase in settler violence of 144% in the past two years. It is an organised campaign to disrupt the lives of Palestinians and to extend the occupation, which continues year-on-year and which, as the hon. Member for Beckenham said, increasingly makes a two-state solution difficult, if not impossible. That is why we need more from the Government—not only words, but action.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most cynical aspects is the Kafkaesque way in which the illegal occupiers use international law to say, “Ah, we should rely on the established law—Ottoman law and mandate law—for the legal framework for house demolitions”? Those laws are used in a perverted way to disadvantage the Palestinian residents who should have rights in that illegally occupied land, while a completely different set of legal rights are applied to the illegal occupations. Is it not that twisted way of interpreting the law that adds offence to the physical destruction of homes, schools and other properties?

[Mr Slaughter]

My right hon. Friend is right. Rules and regulations are manipulated in an absolutely cynical way to wear down and break the spirit of Palestinians living in the west bank. I think that it has been proved that that does not work. The resilience of the Palestinian people there is extraordinary, which is why there is also violence. Arrests, detention—including of children—and administrative detention, which happens on a continual basis, are all designed to break the will of the Palestinian people and favour the occupier and settlers over the indigenous population. I know that the Minister knows those matters well, but I hope that he will redouble his efforts. I will end on that point.

I know that it is a little cheeky, but in the interests of trying to be conciliatory on these matters, can I get a response from the Minister fairly soon on Mohammed Abu Mueleq? He is a former Hamas fighter and activist who is now reformed and wishes to come to the UK to talk to us about the ways of peace.

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[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

I draw the Chamber’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and to the fact that I accompanied my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on his recent visit to the region.

What the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) described as preconditions were, until recently, regarded as the mutually agreed starting point for the way to achieve a two-state solution. Those have now been withdrawn from negotiations, which makes things more difficult. I wanted to highlight the way that Area C, which was originally conceived of as a transitional measure—part of the process of going to a two-state solution—is slowly but surely being taken by the Israelis as an area of Israeli authority, in which they are able to impose their will, often with a fiction of law, as I said in an intervention, to the disadvantage of the Palestinian people. That is a very different concept of Area C. It raises a number of important questions.

As European taxpayers, we are, to a considerable extent, paying the human and social cost of that occupation. We are paying the very substantial funding for the Palestinian Authority, and for pretty much all of what is described as economic growth within the occupied territories. It has been wholly right to provide funding in that way, as part of a genuine transition towards a two-state solution. It is not at all obvious to me how we will continue to make the case for European taxpayers finding that money when we are funding not a transition to a peaceful solution, but the status quo.

One of the things that struck me on my most recent visit was how small the place is and how critical the issues are. We went to the Ma’ale Adumim area, where the Bedouin whom we talked about earlier were. The area between that settlement and Jericho is the same as the area between my constituency in Southampton and Winchester. On a train, that is about enough time get a cup of coffee and get out a laptop. Yet if that settlement continues, the west bank is effectively wholly divided. There is no possibility of a Palestinian state with physical integrity. That is why the settlement must stop now; otherwise, it will be almost impossible for the negotiations to reach a resolution.