Israel and Palestine

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, in congratulating the noble Lord on having introduced this important debate and having given such a clear analysis of the situation, I simply say that if we are thinking about the men, women and children in Palestine and the men, women and children in Israel, we have to look to long-term, sustainable solutions. We must beware of attempts at short-term fixes; we need to find something that will last. By definition, if something is going to last it has to have the support of the maximum number of people on all sides. With our special moral and historical responsibilities, which the noble Lord rightly underlined, we have to think of that principle all the time. The solution in the end will be with the people and their leaders in the region.

If there is one thing that I think that we should say as friends of the Israeli people and friends of the Palestinian people, it is that counterproductivity is the real enemy. Just as it was totally counterproductive of those within Gaza to fire their rockets into Israel and led to great grief on the part of many of us who see ourselves as close friends of the people of Gaza, one must remember that there had been years of provocation, with the ruthless blockade which was systematically destroying the economy and the social welfare structure of Gaza. One has to think of the West Bank checkpoints, the daily humiliation of the people of the West Bank, farmers separated from their land, and the rest. One has to think of the recent proposal by the Cabinet in Israel to make it a Jewish state.

From that standpoint, it seems to me that we must back to the hilt the principle of a two-state solution, which will give both sides the confidence of international respect as they go about trying to find a long-term solution.