Israel and Palestine

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for those comments. He obviously speaks with great authority and passionate interest in this subject. I agree that we should be supporting moderates—not intervening politically to support them, but supporting moderate voices across Israeli society and within the Palestinian Authority. Serious reform needs to be done in the Palestinian area as well.

I want to be clear that, while obviously a new Prime Minister and a new Cabinet are in place, the reason for the timing of this announcement is a sharp rise in settler violence; an accelerating expansion of settlements; a new tender process in the E1 settlement area that was issued in August—which, by the way, completes a week before the Israeli election; and a consistent failure by many of those in power in Israel to hold those who perpetrate violence to account. That is the explanation for the timing.

Israel’s elections will proceed according to Israeli law, and we will not intervene in Israeli politics. We have to make decisions based on the facts that we see. The new Government have come in and made an assessment, and that is why we responded when we did.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

Will the Minister recognise the wisdom of the statement yesterday by the much-respected president of the State of Israel, Isaac Herzog, who said that what is needed in this context is constructive dialogue, not gesture politics. Is it not therefore most unfortunate that, since the appointment of Prime Minister Burnham in July, he is yet even to speak to Prime Minister Netanyahu?

[Lord Wood of Anfield]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. Dialogue is, of course, fundamental to the way forward in this as in any comparable crisis, and in any complex situation like this. President Herzog urged dialogue. When it comes to the expansion of settlements, though, there seems to be precious little dialogue going on domestically to restrain an accelerating and deeply disturbing trend. I will give the House some statistics: as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, there were about 250,000 settlers in 1993 at the time of Oslo, but in 2026 there are 750,000. There are six settler violence incidents per day, with 65 Palestinian communities expelled in their entirety since 2023. I absolutely agree with the need for dialogue, and I think dialogue should be the first port of call between Israel’s Government and the settler community.

I am sorry, I forget the second part of the noble Lord’s question. I do apologise.