Middle East

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Friday 16th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, Iran threatens world stability and the very existence of Israel. My noble friend Lady Falkner has given a very professional and detailed analysis of the situation. However, if one can believe Iran’s rhetoric, Israel should be destroyed. However, a large part of the political world appears to say, “Don’t worry, it’s only words”, and the fact that Iran has, or almost has, a nuclear bomb capability is acceptable, and the fact that it is burying its nuclear attack capability underneath an impregnable mountain is purely an innocent desire not to blot the landscape with launching pads—rather like a proliferation of wind-power farms. That is not the case.

Nuclear weapons and the means to deliver a bomb are increasingly spreading around the world. However, the bomb is nowadays seen as a deterrent—again, as my noble friend Lady Falkner said. Only Iran says very clearly that it will destroy the Zionist entity of Israel. So when, in these conditions, Israel, whose very existence is threatened, considers a preventive strike, the world loses its memory of the bad guy being Iran, not Israel. Please do not take this as an argument for bombing Iran, which could have disastrous consequences.

We have spoken about deterrence. We have so far seen many countries acquire nuclear weapons, and there is a “my bomb is bigger than your bomb” attitude. Does Iran have that same attitude? That is the problem. The world needs to be aware of the nature of those who rule Iran. This week, 22 people were arrested in Azerbaijan who were working with Iran to bomb American and Israeli targets there. That follows the Iranian terrorist plots in India, Georgia, Thailand and Singapore.

Returning to Israel and the Palestinians, there are problems nearer to their home. Speaking as someone who wants a secure Palestinian state living alongside a secure state of Israel, I plead with other noble Lords to do everything in their power to further the peace process. The Israelis tell me, despite what some other noble Lords have said, that they say yes to the quartet’s suggestions and are willing and ready to engage with the Palestinians in negotiations without preconditions, but the Palestinians will apparently not go that far. Of course, there are so many obstacles on both sides, two of which are the Palestinian objections to settlement expansion and the Israelis refusing to sit with Hamas because of its belligerent policies.

Despite all that, the solution must be that, prior to formal negotiations, the Israelis say that when they sit down they will announce as a first step the freezing of settlement expansion including, albeit reluctantly, in east Jerusalem. I say that although there was no precondition in the past for there to be no settlements. The Palestinians will, prior to formal negotiations, need to confirm that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority will, when they sit down, accept, albeit reluctantly, the state of Israel and cease rocket attacks on Israeli towns. Both sides must get to the table knowing that those will be the opening announcements. Then peace negotiations will concentrate on fixing the borders between Israel and the new Palestinian state. That will need to involve acceptance of the three large Israeli settlements just on the West Bank side of the 1967 line, with the Palestinian state receiving other Israeli land of equal size to compensate.

All that has been on the table for a long time. At a stroke, the settlements that other noble Lords have deplored, spread throughout the West Bank with connecting roads, will disappear. They will be taken over by the Palestinian state. If we get to that stage, we can forget about history, because it is about the future of a Palestinian state without that spread of settlements, just as Israel moved all its settlers out of Gaza—to get what? More rockets raining on it. Towns such as Sderot and Ashkelon in southern Israel will stop having rockets raining down upon them. The residents of southern Israel can cease to worry about how near the nearest air raid shelter is. In Sderot, every bus stop is an air raid shelter. That is how they and their children live.

I started my contribution to the debate by talking about the threat from Iran. This very week has seen rockets from Gaza into Israel. Many of those rockets originated in Iran. Forget how it all started and why that has happened; rockets have been raining down on those southern Israeli towns for a long time.

My noble friend Lord Eccles, who is not in the Chamber at the moment, talked about water resources. Water is such an important resource in the Middle East. He should read in Hansard the wonderful debate on water that we had in this Chamber, when I and other noble Lords spoke about the progress that has been made in the region. Within two years, Israel will get virtually all its drinking water from desalination plants; and Gaza, with access to the sea, could have exactly that if peace can rein.

For progress to be achieved on all sides, we must answer the question: do we want our people to live under continual threat or are we prepared to compromise for peace? When my noble friend replies, I hope that he will be able to assure us what Her Majesty’s Government will do to influence Iran’s intentions and that, even if it looks a bleak prospect, the future for the Palestinian-Israel dispute is for both sides to sit down at the negotiating table.