Israel and Palestine

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the noble Lord has made a very powerful speech, which we need to take very seriously. I am sure that I will not be alone in thanking the noble Baroness for having introduced this debate. Her commitment on this issue is second to none. Last week, I was in Gaza, heading up an international mission from the IPU. Our task is to try to draw representatives of the people in Gaza, the Occupied Territories, the West Bank and Israel into more active dialogue so that one can build up a context in which leaders are able to take necessary action. It would be quite wrong for me to report in detail because we must wait until we have visited the other territories, which we hope to do next month. Of course, our talks with Israel will be every bit as important as any other part of the mission.

I think I can say one or two things from a recent visit about the situation as I saw it, some of which has been put before the House before. In every aspect of what I am about to say, the role of civil society is obvious. You cannot build a strong democracy or a strong future without a strong, thriving civil society. That places a huge responsibility on civil society in our own country to get into partnership in that building of the role of the civil societies and the dynamic of society.

I start with water. Some 95% of the water in Gaza is not fit for human consumption. Noble Lords should think of the voluntary and other agencies in this country that operate in the sphere of water; WaterAid springs to mind. Organisations like that have a tremendous role to play in working with the local community to put that right. It will not be put right, however, until the strategic dimensions of water can be tackled. It is an alarming thought that, within two or three years, the aquifer will break down totally because of shortages of the necessary spare parts.

We saw the overcrowded schools and the wonderful, happy—it has to be said—and neatly dressed children going to and from school. There are great things to be done in building partnerships between schools here and schools there, if only they could get on with it. There are 700,000 people out of a total population of 1.7 million—to use the jargon—who are food insecure. That means that they are dependent on handouts by UNRRA and the rest. It became absolutely clear that the population does not want to be dependent; it wants to build a strong economy, and that is what it cannot do in the present situation. People have said, “Has there been no improvement on the supply of goods through the blockade since the ceasefire was negotiated last November?”. I have a good deal of sympathy with people who said to me, “Wait a minute, do not start looking at the tactics. The principle is that somebody else has a hand on the tap and we are not able freely to get access to everything we need to build a balanced economy. We are not getting everything we need but we want to get on with the job”. There is plenty of evidence, even if you look at it very briefly, of people trying desperately hard to do constructive things for their society, but again, the role of civil society here in relating to all that is important.

I conclude by saying on a wider level, because I think I should share this with the House, that I was certainly encouraged by what I had not altogether expected: a lot of positive talk about coming together with Fatah and the people of the West Bank and the Occupied Territories. There really seems to be some hope that the talks that are currently getting under way, with thanks to Egypt for its assistance, can be fruitful. If we are going to do that, of course, there has to be a serious and positive response from the world by saying that these talks desperately matter in providing the context in which progress can be achieved.