Lebanon: Israel Defense Forces Operations

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

The first thing we need, as has been agreed previously but needs to be restated, is cessation of the violence we currently see. Where we have a role in that, we play it, as do others, including the United States. As far as our policies go, we are continuing to provide additional humanitarian support to the now one million-plus displaced people, and we have just had to allocate an additional £30 million to this effort because of the ongoing conflict. But I repeat that the right way to deal with Hezbollah—the only way, in the end, that is going to be a sustainable solution to this—is to strengthen the Government of Lebanon and the armed forces there to enable them to do this in a way that lasts.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, is it not an idea to offer some rather candid advice to our Israeli friends about the inner nature of Lebanon and the vast distinction between the Hezbollah structure—which is like a poisonous spider, poisoning every aspect of Lebanese affairs, including its politics—and the good people of Lebanon, who are friendly, have fought difficult wars in the past, have many different religions and are very supportive of our values and of this nation? Israel has some techniques which it has used for undermining the Hezbollah position very effectively, but its approach, which is to drop more bombs on everybody, including southern Beirut, is not the way forward. Dare we say that, in polite terms, because some of us know Lebanon very well, and Israel is doing it wrong?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I think that we are making many of the points that the noble Lord outlines, directly and publicly, and noble Lords will have seen the moves we have made at the Security Council recently as well. In essence, I completely agree with the noble Lord, and the people of Lebanon themselves are the ones who have really borne the brunt of having to suffer living alongside Hezbollah for so long.