Middle East and North Africa

Khalid Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alistair Burt]

Unsurprisingly, I have a short passage in my speech relating to Kurdish issues, and I think my hon. Friend will find that I address one or two of those points.

I have a particular relationship with the UAE through my current chairmanship of the all-party group on the UAE, and through a connection with my very good friend, the deputy Foreign Minister of the UAE, Dr Anwar Gargash; I commend such a relationship to my hon. Friend the Minister. The UAE belies some of the easy and rather lazy descriptions that the uninformed make about the Gulf. This is a state where women hold very senior positions; for example, the ambassador to the UN and the Minister in charge of the extraordinary Dubai 2020 Expo are women. It is also a state where people can go to church; I went to church on my last visit to Abu Dhabi.

The UAE is also a state whose prosperity relationship with the UK is singularly important. We will contribute to British firms going to Expo 2020. There is also investment by the Emirates in the UK: the £1.5 billion investment by Dubai’s DP World in London Gateway; Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s energy company, is investing more than £500 million in the London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind farm; and the Abu Dhabi United Group is working beyond London in Manchester, through its connection with Manchester City football club, to encourage the regeneration of the city. Again, I profess a special interest, having been the Minister with responsibility for Manchester and Salford many years ago; seeing the regeneration of that great city has been one of the great highlights of the past 20 years. All that activity shows that the UAE is working with and investing in the UK, which enhances the relationship between the two countries.

Wherever we look around the Gulf, particularly in a state such as the UAE, we see a close partner working together with the UK. I emphasise that point because whatever direction the FCO now goes in, it is very important that the middle east and the Gulf remain uppermost in its mind. I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will be keen to ensure that that is the case.

Briefly, please do not forget the middle east. Stick with those states that are working through the Arab spring and working with the Arab Partnership. Stick with Libya—it is difficult. Stick with Egypt, which will be a key partner, even though it will inevitably go through difficulties. It has serious human rights and judicial issues to overcome, but its economy needs support if the country is to get anywhere with its democracy. Egypt’s parliamentary elections later this year will be keenly scrutinised to ensure that they are fully inclusive. Certainly, the state has questions to answer, as we all know, but it will be a key partner for the future and in increasing the prosperity of the region as a whole.

In a final point on the values that we hold dear, let me mention that throughout the region religious intolerance and ensuring that there is greater freedom of worship and conscience is another important issue that I am sure the FCO will address. I know that one or two colleagues here today will talk about that specifically

I had the honour yesterday of meeting two young women from Iran who had been imprisoned in Tehran in 2009 for being Christian believers. Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh are now free in the United States. They have written about their experiences and make the point that although a rapprochement in Iran in many ways has advantages for all of us, to neglect human rights issues in Iran would be a mistake. They also make the point that it is not only Christians who are suffering; so are Baha’is and others. We know that across the region the agonies caused by differences between Muslim sects have been reflected in the pressures on those of other faiths and of none. I am certain that a greater sense of religious tolerance throughout the region is a value that the UK and this Parliament would strongly profess, and again I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to make that a key part of his work in the region.

Before I sit down, I will address two major issues briefly: first, Syria and, secondly, Gaza. With Syria, it seems that we have a very short attention span for tragedy. One has to do a little bit of searching now in the newspapers to find out that the agony of Syria is continuing. In three years perhaps 160,000 people have been killed, although there are estimates of many more. There is a need to ensure that the truth of what is happening in Syria comes out, rather than a narrative produced by the Syrian regime.

In short, Assad would have us all believe that right from the beginning he was challenged not by his own people but by foreign extremists. That is untrue. There were no foreign extremists on the streets of Damascus when the first brave people asked not for his overthrow but for reform. They were met with torture and violence, and with a deliberate campaign to ensure that more extremists came into the country from outside, because Assad knew that his greatest chance of staying in power was to convince the outside world that he was threatened by terrorists from outside and not from his own country. Sadly, that narrative has had all too much opportunity to succeed.

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that while that uprising took place, there was a serious element of the Muslim Brotherhood within Syria that was promoting much of the violence that took place, as well as the regime’s violence?

[Alistair Burt]

Disentangling all the various elements of Syria is not an easy job. Disentangling the issues of the Muslim Brotherhood is, of course, a matter that now concerns the UK greatly as it pursues its review of the impact of the Muslim Brotherhood not only on places abroad but on the UK itself. There are different views on whether the Muslim Brotherhood represents a spectrum of opinion, or whether there is a very hard, almost fascistic edge to it in what it wishes to achieve—certainly, there are places and evidence that back that up, and places where it is not sufficiently proved. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman is right to raise that as an issue that deserves to be looked at in the Syrian context.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

It is, as always, a privilege to be under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan. I thank the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for securing this important debate. I realise that he originally intended to cover a far greater area, which is hugely necessary. I support that. The debate needs to be far wider, because there are issues in the rest of the area that need a serious hearing. That would be useful.

I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who has been diligent in his approach to this issue for a long time, even before I came to this place. I also pay tribute to his persistence in trying to act as an honest broker to achieve things. Unfortunately, for a long period, we have not been very successful in doing so.

Let me make it clear that I wholly and unreservedly condemn Hamas attacks and rocket launches. There is absolutely no justification for that, and it should not be a way of trying to move forward. However, the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire said that there was no disproportionate action by the Israeli Government and the Israel Defence Forces. I beg to differ. I think that significantly disproportionate action has been taken by the IDF and the Israeli Government, and that there is a significant difference in what is going on, particularly in terms of the hardware available to the IDF: their military air, ground and sea power, and the technology of the Iron Dome missile protection shield.

All that is fine. It is protection, and in defence terms, that is needed. However, defence becomes aggression when people are targeted and restricted to living in a limited area, and then told, “We’ll tap you on the roof to tell you that if you don’t leave, there will be a missile to follow, and you’ll be obliterated.” It becomes difficult for a huge populace squashed into a small land mass. The area is under lockdown. People here have called it a prison, and I do not disagree with that description. The people there have no access by sea or air, and no real access by land. We have discussed how we can get people to move out. Sometimes, even when it happens, four children playing on a beach get killed, so where do those people go?

[Jim Shannon]

I appreciate the point the hon. Gentleman is making. I think he is aware, like others in this House, that Hamas has used civilians as cover for its activities. I am sure he condemns that as well.

[Mr Mahmood]

I have no problem condemning it, but I will come to that point later.

A lot of statistics have been bandied about today, particularly by the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who is not in his place at the moment. I will give a few statistics as well. According to current figures from the United Nations, 77% of Palestinian fatalities so far have been civilians, which raises concerns about respect for international humanitarian law. Some 23 medical facilities and 81 schools have been damaged by shelling; 214 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 164 civilians, of whom 44 were children and 29 women; 1,585 Palestinians have been injured, of whom 435 are children and 282 are women; 1,660 homes have been destroyed or severely damaged, directly displacing 9,900 persons.

We have been talking about people’s ability to move out of that confined space in a difficult area. Whether Hamas uses people as human shields has been mentioned. The problem is that there is no real civil or policing structure left in the area to get hold of what Hamas does. That is the result of continuous bombing of police stations and civil buildings even before Hamas came into power, when the Palestine Liberation Organisation was in control. In a way, that policy allowed Hamas to come to power, by continually weakening the authority that wanted to talk and move forward. Day in, day out, their existence was continually eroded. Then Hamas, for all its ills, was elected. That is what happens when people cannot respond to their situation: they turn to what they feel can get them out of it. What happens in those circumstances is an issue.

The people in that area have no choice. We insist that the UN place people in there to protect the people and do something about it. We should speak to the Arab League and say, “You put some people in there, so we can at least have some sort of stability for the people in the area,” because ultimately, it is they who suffer as a consequence. We try to go back to the peace process. For too long, I have heard about the idea of the peace process. We have not had a proper negotiation at any stage about the peace process. That will not and cannot happen, purely because the settlements continue and the Israeli Government have erected the wall, and because of their treatment of the right of the Palestinian population there to life and a decent standard of civil liberties. Until that is addressed, we will never get to a position where things can be dealt with positively and we can have recourse to a settlement between the two peoples.

We all say that a two-state solution is right—that the Israelis and the Palestinians should both have the right to exist—but how do we bring that into being? We are just talking nonsense, by and large. That is not practical in view of what is going on, until somebody has the gall to stand up to Israel and say, “Look, if you want to sort this out, we have to have new measures and new ways of looking at this. Overreaction to what is going on in Gaza is not a way forward and will not help us.”