West Bank

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, on behalf of the opposition Front Bench, I would like to say how much we welcome the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has got us this debate. It is a vital but not very well publicised issue, and she is certainly right that questions of water supply are about human rights. She has pursued this with her typical determination, which I admire, as well as her personal diplomacy through her twinning efforts between Watford and the Palestinian territories. I therefore have the greatest respect for what she is trying to do in highlighting these issues.

All noble Lords who have spoken in this debate accept that there are serious issues at stake here. The noble Lords, Lord Warner, Lord Alderdice and Lord Wright of Richmond, also spoke passionately about the problems. I agree with my noble friends Lord Winston and Lord Turnberg that certainly we have no wish to vilify the Israelis, and I am sure that many ordinary Israelis are horrified by these facts as much as anyone in this House. I also fully accept that the politics of the Palestinian Authority and of Hamas are not always the most constructive.

However, when you research the reports written by a number of international organisations and reputable NGOs on these issues, as I did briefly for this debate, one can only come to the conclusion that the Israelis have a serious case to answer. The most recent report I looked at was produced by the World Health Organisation last month. In that report the WHO says that the average supply of water to the Palestinians is only 50% of what it regards as a reasonable daily requirement, and that it is much worse in some parts of the territories—in Gaza and the so-called Area C—than in the rest. It also says, as did the noble Lord, Lord Wright, that Israel dominates the take of water from the aquifer on the West Bank—over 80% of it is taken by the Israelis—and similarly of the underwater aquifer in Gaza. Settlement building has made the problem worse: they are building deep wells, the building of which affects the water table and makes life more difficult for the Palestinians. The greatest injustice of the lot, in a way, is that the Israelis then sell a lot of the water back to the Palestinians, at quite a hefty profit. One estimate is that 50% of water in those parts of the territories has to be bought from Israel.

What is the Government’s view of this? This is something on which the British Government ought to have its own independent assessment of how serious these problems are. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that at the conclusion of this debate. We ought also to know what representations and what action the Government are taking to pursue this issue. I picked up in my researches an interesting report on these issues produced by Amnesty International in 2009. One of its suggestions, which seems perfectly sensible, is that there should be much closer co-ordination between the international donors who are trying to help to resolve these problems; a system of transparent reporting of difficulties and obstacles that they encounter, whether they are on the Israeli side or the Palestinian side; and a proper mechanism for reporting what is going on. That transparency and reporting mechanism seems to me to be an important part of trying to resolve the difficulties. What are we doing through our own aid efforts and the EU to try to ensure that that is done?

I have been passionately pro-Israeli all my political life but when one hears about some of the problems that the Palestinians encounter, it makes one wonder about the seriousness of the present Israeli Government’s commitment to a two-state solution. There are steps that the Israelis could take. As the noble Lord, Lord Wright, eloquently said, if they do not want to have blood on their hands, they should not have water on their consciences.