Palestinian Territories

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful, as I am sure the whole House is, to the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for introducing this debate and for the excellent speech with which he did so. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, said that the question is: what should we, the United Kingdom, do now? I believe that it is time for us to recognise Palestine—that is, for Her Majesty’s Government to recognise it, as the House of Commons and so on already have.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester suggested, it would perhaps have been best if we had been able to recognise Palestine at the time we recognised Israel. That was, after all, the start of the two-state solution, when the United Nations set it down. It had been discussed a great deal but that is when it was first laid down by the UN. The two-state solution has existed since then and it goes on from there.

However, the reasons I support recognition now are not merely historical. The two-state solution, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, is at risk because of the huge amount of Israeli building and development in the Occupied Territories since 1967 and because of the ruthless and brutal nature of the occupation, both generally and particularly, of course, in Gaza. The United States has long helped Israel ride roughshod over the United Nations’ authority in that part of the world, and now President Trump and his Administration have broken ranks again by moving the United States embassy. Peace can come only by wide agreement, and in my view British recognition of Palestine would help to redress the balance between the two and change the terms of the argument.

As a matter of fact, it is the symbolism of this that matters most—as it was, indeed, with the recognition of Israel all those years ago. It is the symbolism of moving the embassy that matters most. The present symbolism is of the United Kingdom refusing to recognise Palestine, which 130 out of 193 members of the United Nations have done. Palestine, after all, is a country which Britain told the Security Council in 2011 had developed the capacity to run a state; we said that that was the best way for it to live in peace with Israel. Above all, recognition would give the Palestinians hope. Over the 50 years that I have been going to Palestine and Israel as a result of my wife’s family connections, there have been times when hopes have risen. The Oslo accords were a prime example, when the PLO recognised Israel. But these days it is very difficult to see any hope in the present situation. Of course, when people have no hope they despair, and desperation is the seedbed of terrorism.

So we in the United Kingdom should not simply go round and round the old arguments, deploring the killings, the fighting, the settlements and so on. We should do what we can to move it all forward. We should recognise Palestine as soon as we can.