Situation in the Red Sea

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The freedom of navigation, maritime security and upholding international law are fundamental principles, and this country, along with international partners, has a duty to uphold them. We have heard about the economic consequences. The disruption caused by what is happening in the Red sea affects peace not only there but throughout the region.

As the Defence Secretary and the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee said, there are complex and historical issues that will need political solutions in due course. These are long-standing disputes with complex origins, whether that be the interference of colonial powers in the past; communal, religious or ethnic rivalries; or the struggle for oil and other natural resources. I do not claim to be an expert, but there are certainly parallels with what happened in the 1960s, with the North Yemen civil war and the Aden emergency—UK forces occupied Aden from 1839 to 1967—and many of the issues have ancient origins.

However, I add a note of caution. I know exactly what has been said by many speakers so far in relation to conflating the actions of the Houthis in Yemen with what is happening in Israel and Palestine. Nobody should be so naive as to think that the motives of the Houthis are humanitarian or unselfish. As the Defence Secretary said, the Houthis are entirely opportunistic in what they are doing, but that is not necessarily the way that it is seen on the Arab street, or by our constituents, so we must address that issue head on. The priority given to dealing with attacks on shipping in the Red sea should also, as many of my constituents say to me, be given to dealing with attacks on human life in Gaza and wherever else, including in Yemen.

Let us look at what the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions. If I understood him correctly, he set a number of tests that had to be met before there could be a ceasefire in Gaza: all hostages should be released—presumably he means Israeli and Palestinian hostages; Hamas should disarm and disappear from Gaza, so as not to be in a position to threaten Israel or anyone else; and the Palestinian Authority should take over the role of governance there. Nobody would be more pleased than I if those three criteria were met. Indeed, I am sure that hostage release and swaps will be part of any ceasefire, even a temporary one, but how realistic is it to expect that Hamas will disappear overnight or that, to use their own phraseology, the Palestinian Authority will ride into Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks? I do not believe that that is a realistic assessment of where we need to go before a ceasefire occurs.

Today, the Prime Minister was asked by the leader of the Scottish National party—this question is often asked of the Government—whether he believed that war crimes had been committed in Gaza. That is not a difficult question. Yes, it is absolutely true that there are restrictions on journalists and international observers going into Gaza, but there is enough coming out of Gaza to see that it is not an exhaustive list. None the less, many leading international jurists have seen deprivation of life, collective punishment, arbitrary detention, denial of basic services including healthcare, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. Simply to reply, as any Government spokesman does, that Israel should comply with international humanitarian law, is not sufficient. The question is: is Israel complying in that way?

Today, I noted that a 200-page opinion piece, published by Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights but authored by independent jurists, found that in Gaza, persecution—a crime against humanity—had been committed more intensely since 7 October, but that it goes back to 2007, when the siege of Gaza began. If the Government’s position is to be credible they must address those events. What is happening in Gaza is extraordinary: 1% of the population—25,000 people—have been killed in three months under the most horrific circumstances. We heard the shadow Defence Secretary describe that in his opening remarks, and there are strong parallels with what is going on.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

On international law, let us face it: international humanitarian law is the last resort, when other things have gone wrong. Perhaps the side that we politicians can take is that of morality. What is the right thing to do? What is the humanitarian thing to do? What should we do about human misery? That is why the immediate bilateral ceasefire is so important. There is a choice. The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court will be looking at the war crimes, and it is right to let the courts do their job, but the Government could also have made a moral judgment. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Andy Slaughter]

I think I always agree with the hon. Member on this issue, if not on others. She has clear personal knowledge of it, and is under particular strain because her extended family are in Gaza. I pay tribute to her ability to maintain the objectivity that she has just shown in her comments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Sir Liam Fox), because I agree so much with what he just said, and in particular with the way he set out how Iran decides to back many different groups that will cause chaos. That root cause itself needs to be addressed.

Although I am half Palestinian, we lived in Jordan for five years just after King Hussein passed away, and we were in Egypt just after the Arab spring, so my link to the region is not just by blood; we were there. When we talk about the middle east, it sometimes feels as though we are playing 3D chess, while spinning around most of the time, trying to understand who is in, who is out and what is happening. It is fair to say that the region has been poorly led and poorly served by its politicians for very many decades. Arabs are proud, intelligent, capable people who have every right to live in dignity and security, as does anyone else. I am sorry to say that there have been elements of the debate about Israel and Palestine that seem to forget that. When we talk about peace in the region, we often omit that Palestinians need to be at the heart of it as much as Israelis.

We talk about Arab-led, and yes absolutely—Arab-led. Let me draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I went to the Manama dialogue at the invitation of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. When we were there, we heard from the Bahraini Foreign Minister, who made clear the case for why peace and two states is not just in the interests of Israel and Palestine, but is in Bahrain’s interests as well. It is a regional interest, and the reason for that—this is linked to what previous speakers have said—is because this is the biggest toy that Iran and other mischief makers in the region have to play with, and they have been playing with it for their own nefarious ends for far too long. They have no real interest in the Palestinian people. Let me be clear: when I speak to other Palestinians, we know that. We know that they are jumping on the bandwagon now. We still talk about the paper tigers of the ’60s, and lots of Arab states will say when it is convenient for them that they will come and ride in our defence. But when at that final moment it comes to who backs us, the answer is, “Well, no one”, and so we rely on ourselves. That is the view of pretty much every Palestinian I know.

That said, it does not mean that we do not need help, so this is my plea for help. Two states is not just in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians. Let me emphasise Israelis as well, because the peace camp in Israel has taken an enormous blow. Let us remind ourselves that very many peace activists have been taken hostage and been disgracefully raped. Hamas is no friend to the Palestinian cause. But this war has driven ordinary, peace-loving people into the arms of the extremes of the debate, and when we look at the polls—one was done very recently—we see that people are now backing Hamas and backing Netanyahu, when before they did not. We must reflect on that.

Why has that happened? These are the same people as before 7 October. The reason it has happened is because we have allowed it to happen. The longer this war is waged in the way it has been waged, and in the way that it feels so one-sided, with the humanity at the centre of it not at its heart, by the western world in particular, the more abandoned ordinary people feel. And when people feel abandoned, that is when the centre ground where the dialogue happens is vacated.

My plea to this House continues to be to not forget the Palestinian cause. Yes, I am here with my Palestinian scarf and my blood, but I say that not for me but for regional security. I put it to the Minister that the cause is in Britain’s security interests, and we can see that for ourselves. When we say that the region is a tinderbox, we do not mean that one thing is causal on another, but that there are multiple flashpoints, and all it takes is for one thing to go wrong and we find that they all blow up at the same time. That is why the debate and earlier vote were important. It is true that the Houthis wanted this to happen, but that risk of escalation is real. There was a true and legitimate concern that we had to act, and not acting is also acting. We back what the Government have done, but what happens if things start to go wrong? What if that nuclear reaction starts to get out of control and we end up in a situation where that tinderbox has been set alight? The worry I have is that whenever we have questioned the Prime Minister on how we come off this ledge, we have not had that assurance on what the plan is. We still do not have that plan.

On plans, the recognition of the state of Palestine has never been more important. I talk about an immediate bilateral ceasefire to bring the people from the extremes back to the centre and to start to heal some of the wounds, but a ceasefire is not the end; a ceasefire only ever freezes a conflict. If we want to say, “This is the last time”—I sincerely believe that across this House there is broad agreement on that point—we need to get serious about how we bring the two states back to the table, and quickly.

We have only to look at what is happening in America and the chances of Trump coming back to see that our window of opportunity—that is in terms not just of public opinion, which is at its height, but of an America that is willing to be a willing partner—is fast diminishing. We know that the European Union is talking about a conference. We know that the Arab states are also talking. My question to the Minister is: who are we talking to? How quickly do we think we can get this twin track or whatever we want to call it off the ground? As part of that, I urge him, as I have in previous debates, to recognise Palestine sooner rather than later.

Putting my Palestine hat back on for a moment, all we Palestinians want is the power to have what all other countries have. We want our own votes at the United Nations. We want to raise our own money to rebuild and to educate our children. It is not the case that we are not capable; we just do not have the tools. What we want above all is to live in dignity alongside our Israeli cousins. It is the scars that we so sadly share that will bind us together. Like scars, they are not comfortable, but often when the bone grows back it is stronger than before. That is how both peoples feel. They need to be given the tools as equal partners to be able to resolve this conflict. Without a very early, full-fledged recognition of the Palestinian state—I argue that should be first, not last in the process—we will never get there.