Palestine: United Nations General Assembly Resolution

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, it is obviously a time when we should all turn our minds to how we take things forward. However, in our concern about how we take things forward, it is also important to have some historical context for what has happened, and it is a long story.

We have special responsibility in this country towards Israel because we were one of the principal powers that played a key part in bringing Israel into existence and we must therefore not betray our responsibility in that context. It is also important to remember that, historically and objectively, no people paid a higher price for the creation of the State of Israel than the Palestinian people. It is important therefore to see both sides of the argument in history, because it is not just a current crisis that we face but a deeply rooted history.

I do not happen to believe that the West and our own country under successive Governments have been even-handed in their approach to this situation, when, if any issue in the world demanded even-handedness, it was this one. We have been pro-Israeli, and history will read the message very clearly. We may try to persuade ourselves that we were not letting down the Palestinians but we were, repeatedly. Where has our voice been on the blockade, on the screwing of the economy of Gaza? In two or three years’ time, the one remaining aquifer in Gaza will collapse, because spare parts have not been allowed in through the blockade to maintain it. Ninety per cent of the water in Gaza is not fit for human consumption. The schools, the health, and the economy of Gaza have been screwed.

Almost exactly a year ago I was in the West Bank and Jordan, and up until then I had not realised quite what the settlements meant. They are not just a few nice settlements—Israeli suburbs in the West Bank and Gaza—but fortified encampments with security gates. Palestinian life is absolutely distorted. People are humiliated day after day as they pass through the security gates, where they are treated rather brusquely, to say the least. Farmers are able to get to their land and back again only at certain specified hours. I asked what would happen if a farmer had a heart attack. The UNRWA people told me, “Well, somebody would have to get on to us, and we’d have to try to negotiate an arrangement with the Israelis so that the gates were opened to allow the people back”. We have not faced up to the realities of what is going on.

Another issue worries me very deeply. I recall how in 1967 I was in Israel for the duration of the war. I talked to Israelis then, who said to me, as they listened to militant, pro-Israeli language being broadcast into the country in the excitement of everything that was going on, “It’s all right for these people, but we’ve got to make a future with our neighbours and all the people in the region”. Israelis said that to me. Since then Israelis have refused to serve in the armed services, because they will not be part of what is going on, and other Israelis have made brave stands against these policies. Our absence of even-handedness has let down those brave and courageous Israeli people who have tried to advocate an alternative policy for their country.

We have to look to the future. We must not suddenly switch from our responsibilities. History will not allow us to do that. But it is because we have special responsibility for the creation of the State of Israel that we must always speak honestly and bluntly about what really matters for Israel’s survival. The truth of the matter is that the present policies of Israel—and we all know this—could not be better designed to undermine the future prospects of the people of Israel. They prolong the danger and the threats that will accumulate.

How will we approach the future? Reference has been made to the need for a regional approach, which I am sure is right. We must have a regional approach to secure the future. However, a regional approach cannot impose a solution. No one can impose a solution. The solution will have to be generated by the Palestinian and Israeli people. That is where it will come from. We have an example in our own history, that of Northern Ireland. If it is to work, it must have the commitment of the key parties, which will mean a readiness to talk to people with whom it may not be very easy to talk, just as we learnt that we had to talk to the political wing of the IRA if we were to make progress. That was critical.

However, we also learnt something else in that process in Northern Ireland: that we must keep any preconditions to an absolute minimum because they will only distort everything, and they will not be owned by the participants. Some of the things that as outsiders we see as obviously essential must come from the participants in the negotiations, who have to come to those conclusions themselves. They must go through a process of learning in the negotiations that go on. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, would agree with me that that is exactly what happened in Northern Ireland.

We should also be encouraging and supporting them in practical co-operation. The conference on water organised by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, which I was so glad to be able to attend, was a very interesting example of this. It demonstrated how we can help them to get into practical situations in which they see their mutual interdependence.

The most important point of all is that a negotiated, lasting, enduring solution will have to be inclusive. It will have to draw in the widest possible cross-section of people. It is nonsense, and stupidity, to refuse to see that Hamas has to be part of the solution. This can no longer be tolerated, because of course it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It undermines any chance of emerging moderate or more enlightened leadership in Hamas, and plays right into the hands of the extremists, who are there, and who will use Hamas for their own irreconcilable ideological religious—or other—objectives.

This will take a lot of imagination. What is tragic—and I use the word in the real Greek sense—about the vote last week is that we marginalised ourselves. I hope that my noble friend, who introduced the debate with a particularly good speech, will not mind my saying that the Question refers to talks with the Palestinian leaders since the vote. I cannot imagine that we are very high on the Palestinians’ list of priorities for talks at this juncture.