United States: Foreign Policy

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging debate instituted very well by the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, to whom we are all grateful. As one or two others have done and the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, just did, I want to concentrate on a decision that throws light on the activities of the United States. That is the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

My interest, as I have outlined before, is that my wife was the third generation of her family to be born in Jerusalem, having gone there for Christian reasons in Ottoman times. The family still has interests and friends on all sides of the religions and confessions there. The noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, pointed out that over that period we British failed to protect the existing inhabitants of Palestine as Balfour’s letter promised. We also failed to prepare Palestine for independence, as we were required to do under the mandate. Now we find ourselves facing problems there again.

It interested me that the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, made such a clear distinction between east and west Jerusalem and suggested that east Jerusalem, in spite of the statement by the President the other day, might indeed be the capital of Palestine. He is right to concentrate on the Old City as the focal point. Every effort to settle the problems of these two countries by partition, from the Peel commission in 1937 to UN resolutions over the years, has recognised the inescapable fact that the status of Jerusalem needs to reflect its importance to Jews, Muslims and Christians if peace is to be secured and to last. Of course, it would be easier to be consoled by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, if one did not also know of the tremendous pressure put on the residents of east Jerusalem by the Israelis through residence restrictions, movement restrictions all the time, building restrictions and the building of settlements in east Jerusalem, which has been going on ruthlessly for many years and which continues to this day.

It is significant, particularly in the context of this debate, that we and other western democracies have not followed the United States in this initiative. The noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, hoped that, in the United States, democracy might help to curb the excesses of Donald Trump, and we all hope that. However, we the allies of America also have a duty in this respect not necessarily to follow all his policies over the years and to lean out of the boat in the other direction.

The damage that was done by the statement on Jerusalem was, first, a blow to the United Nations and its resolutions and the rules-based order that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, referred to in his excellent maiden speech, as did other noble Lords. The statement is also a blow to the idea that America might be a broker between Israel and Palestine, as previous US Presidents have done their best to be. I am particularly sad about that because for a brief period last year, when American policies seemed to be developing, particularly in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and so on, it seemed that the great dealmaker, as he is said to be—at least by himself—might open up new possibilities of reconciling this stubborn problem. I fear that has become much less likely and less possible.

In the face of US policy, we in this country, with our other allies in Europe and elsewhere, need to redouble our efforts to try to bring peace in Israel/Palestine but also in other parts of the world, not just sit back and bemoan what is happening. Of course, many Israelis and Palestinians want to get on with one another. Those are the people we should help, while doing our best to marginalise the zealots on both sides of this terrible divide.