Israel and Palestine

Lord Bew Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, for securing this debate. I listened to her initial remarks with the same pleasure and profit as always. I declare an interest as chairman of the Anglo-Israel Association and as the outgoing chairman of the British-Irish Association.

The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, made the point that 2013 marks the 20th anniversary of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for a final status accord. The happy future that seemed to beckon in Washington in September 1993 has not come about. I want to make a point about this drawn from the Irish experience. The logic that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, which successfully underpinned the Irish process, cannot apply in this more difficult case, in part because the Middle East is awash with selfish strategic interest of great powers, while Ireland, frankly, was not; and in part because of the level of hatred involved, which makes the good work which goes on in civil society even more important. A very recent example which has come to light is Mohamed Morsi denying humanity to Jews and talking about them as descendents of apes and dogs. I am well aware that things have been said by Israeli leaders which would have been better left unsaid. However, I recall no such language, despite the bitterness, in the Irish case. We are dealing with something qualitatively different here, and it means that a different process is required. The lesson from the failures and disappointments of the last 20 years is that the concept that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed is probably suitable in one case, but not in another. Instead, we should be looking for incremental and indeed in some cases unilateral steps towards peace; that is, of course, what makes today’s debate particularly important.

As has been remarked, Israel has an active and vibrant civil society. I want to mention and praise in particular NGOs such as the Alliance for Middle East Peace, which represents 70 leading NGOs that work to promote reconciliation; the Peres Centre for Peace; and of course those many groups and think tanks which focus on the possibilities for enhanced economic co-operation. On this subject, I particularly commend the ICSR Atkin series paper by Oday Abukaresh, which is included in the Library’s very helpful briefing pack for this debate. All of this work helps to explain why, despite the tensions and the frequent, bitter tides of public opinion, the latest poll for the Abraham Centre shows that 67% of Israelis support a two-state solution. This is in part due to the work of so many in civil society to promote a more complex understanding.

I conclude by taking one possible, very simple area for enhanced co-operation. This was suggested by another Atkin Fellow, Gil Messing, in a recent paper. He points out that an earthquake in the West Bank, for example, would affect both Israelis and Palestinians. Joint drills and exercises would be beneficial to both sides. Israel has significant experience here, especially with fire marshals, earthquake awareness, and flooding, and it should share some of this knowledge with the very disadvantaged Palestinian emergency personnel. This may seem to be a small example, but these small examples which stress the common humanity—unlike some of the language which I referred to earlier—are of particular importance.

At the beginning I talked about the ways in which the path to peace is unfortunately more difficult. I remember how, in 1993, we in Northern Ireland were lectured on the lines of, “Look, Middle East peace is about to happen and you can’t get your act together”. Unfortunately, the path to peace in the Middle East is significantly more difficult, for very hard reasons. However, one analogy between the two processes holds. There was only one possible constitutional settlement to the Irish question: namely, power-sharing plus an Irish dimension. At various times people said that it was dying or gone, that the unionists were too angry to permit it now that such and such had happened, or that the nationalists’ ambitions had gone too far and they would accept only something more radical. In the end we returned to what the human mind knew to be the only possible, logical compromise. In this respect this is also the case with the Middle East. The only possible, logical compromise that preserves the interests of both sides is a two-state solution. That is why the work of these groups in civil society that we talked about today is so important.