Israel and Palestine

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for enabling your Lordships’ House to consider such an important issue. I also visited Israel a few weeks ago as part of an all-party parliamentary delegation. My time there opened my eyes not only to the proximity and vulnerability of the Middle East’s superpower to the immediate and existential threats it faces, but to the fragility of freedom—the freedom to be Israel, the freedom to exist, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, highlighted so powerfully.

Seeing Israel up close forced me to put myself in Israeli shoes and ask myself: how would I feel to be surrounded by forces that denied my country’s right to exist and pledged to wipe my country, and with it the region’s only democracy, off the map?

As Israel attempts to absorb the horror of last weekend’s drive-by Hamas terrorist shootings, I might also ask the question: with whom should my country negotiate? Should it be with Hamas terrorists, who have used my country’s withdrawal from Gaza to turn it into a launchpad for terrorist rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and who, even now, are openly constructing terrorist tunnels, using hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cement supposedly destined for reconstruction but instead designated by Hamas for destruction—the destruction of Israeli lives?

Perhaps my country should negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas instead. However, it is one thing to step up to the podium of the UN General Assembly; it is quite another to step up to the plate as a credible partner for peace. Relying on extremism, such as glorifying terrorist murderers of sleeping children as martyrs and inciting five year-olds to racial hatred of Jews—mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech—is no basis for providing a credible partnership for peace or engendering trust among Israelis, the very people whom President Abbas must convince of his good faith as a prerequisite to successful negotiations.

The worst thing we could do today would be inadvertently to send the Palestinians a signal that violence pays and that more drive-by shootings, more stabbings and more rocket attacks will somehow force the Israelis to the negotiating table. Terrorism must not, cannot, triumph. Surely, credible negotiations require a credible partnership for peace.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Trimble that we can be ready to encourage, to facilitate and to support when the Israelis and the Palestinians are themselves ready to talk peace, but we can neither ensure the revival of negotiations nor assume the crucial role of credible partners. Only the interested parties in the Middle East can do that.