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.

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.