Israel and Palestinian Talks

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It has been a pleasure to be here for this excellent debate, and to welcome the Minister for the Middle East to his position. This is also a significant debate for me personally, because when I came here as a newly elected MP, my very first vote in the House was to recognise the state of Palestine. As the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) said earlier, the vote was won by a majority of 262. I thank all those speakers on both sides of the House who have made such passionate and erudite contributions throughout the course of this debate. I particularly want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya), who made her maiden speech today. She set a shining example as one of Peterborough’s powerful women, and I look forward to her future contributions in the House.

One common thread has run through all the speeches today: the urgent need for peace. We are now 100 years on from the Balfour declaration, and we cannot tolerate a situation in which yet another generation of Israeli and Palestinian children grow up understanding violence, division and extremism as part of their normal lives. We owe it to all those children to see this conflict from their perspective and to resolve to end it on their behalf, whether they are young Israeli children living in fear of the air raid sirens in Tel Aviv or young Palestinian children living in grinding poverty in refugee camps behind the Israeli blockade. Will the Minister tell us what specific steps the Government are taking to secure humanitarian relief and a long-term improvement in conditions for all those young Palestinian children condemned to a life of poverty and violence simply as a result of where they were born?

On the issue of humanitarian relief, let me ask the Minister another question. The Foreign Office stated in December last year, after the Brexit outcome was known, that the UK’s financial aid to the Palestinian Authority was best channelled directly through EU funding programmes. The Foreign Office said that the mechanism

“offers the best value for money and the most effective way of directly providing support.”

Do the Government intend to continue their participation in that funding programme even after Brexit? If not, what alternatives are they putting in place to ensure that they achieve the same value for money and the same effectiveness of outcomes?

In conclusion, we have made it clear today that an end to conflict between Israel and Palestine can be achieved only when all sides stop taking actions that perpetuate the conflict and start taking actions that will nurture peace. That means not only a total end to attacks on the Israeli people and state and a clear recognition of Israel’s right to exist, but stepping up efforts to tackle the grinding poverty, the lack of opportunities and the cycle of violence in which so many Palestinian children are trapped. It means having an honest conversation with our Israeli friends about the actions they can take to ease the humanitarian crisis, particularly through the lifting of the blockade. Since 1917, Britain has stood by the two key elements of the Balfour declaration: working to establish and protect the national homeland of Israel while ensuring that nothing is done to prejudice the rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Those remain the key tenets of Labour’s policy on the middle east, and they are the key tests that we will apply when judging the policy statements of this Government. With that in mind, I look forward to the Minister’s response.