Middle East (IRC Report)

Lord Stone of Blackheath Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stone of Blackheath (Lab)]

My Lords, this report and what has already been said confirms what I have learned in 50 years’ involvement in many projects in the Middle East: the situation is complex, multifaceted and interconnected; apportioning blame and trying to negate the narrative of “the other” just makes things worse; and solutions are best developed by the people in the region.

Progress can be made with well-meaning groups on all sides working simultaneously, both horizontally and vertically: horizontally across the piece, straddling the various divides between individuals of differing cultures and religions, and across the leaders of the nations in the area; and, at the same time, vertically with small local projects at ground level and, at the mid-level, with leading academics, businessmen and NGOs, and then with the heads of state and Governments at the top. Were we to co-ordinate these both vertically and horizontally, we could make further progress.

I should like to offer your Lordships some hope by describing actual projects at all levels. At tier 1—at ground level—next month I shall be visiting a small, budding project whereby very religious Jewish ex-settlers who were told to leave Gaza and live in Eilat need someone else to grow their food in their sabbatical year. Every seven years, religious Jews are, by dint of their beliefs, not allowed to work their land and must let it rest. Across the border in Jordan, the Bedouin women whom I am visiting have offered to work the land and create a business supplying these Israeli religious Jews with food in that seventh year. However, the women can work only during the day, so Syrian refugees in southern Jordan have joined the partnership to work the night shift. Entrepreneurial Jordanian nationals have seen that there is a business to be had in working these fields by exporting the high-quality crops every year to other countries in the Middle East. I love it: Israeli Jews, Bedouins, Syrians and Jordanians—a win-win-win-win situation with a combination of interests, and I am going to try to help them.

Another group, PICO Jerusalem—an innovation hub melding people from all cultures to work together in start-ups in Jerusalem—is in the process of launching an initiative to bring education in technology, innovation and entrepreneurship to adults, youths and children in Jerusalem with all its environments. On the ground there are hundreds of such projects.

At the next level up, a movement called Two States, One Homeland—I have spoken about this before—is asking the people on both sides to try to understand the narrative of the other and to accept, with compassion, that that is the genuine belief of those on the other side. For example, many Israelis are accepting that the Palestinians believe that the region is their homeland and they want consideration of their right to return. Palestinians, on the other hand, are accepting that Jews believe that the whole area is their homeland and that living in parts of the West Bank is precious to them. Having accepted these as differing historical contexts, they have agreed to work together on a plan called Two States, One Homeland, which comprises the state of Israel, a state of Palestine, but also a confederation across these two sovereign states.

The best international lawyers are agreeing to help the people on both sides to create a constitutional settlement for a confederation, and international security experts are deciding how the separate countries run their own military and police force and co-ordinate this with the confederation. On trade and investment, finance and currency, there is already a team of Palestinians, Israelis and international investors working on this. On the holy sites, rabbis, bishops and imams are all working together.

Thirdly, at the highest vertical level and horizontally across the whole region, there is a group promoting a regional initiative. Prominent Israelis, business people, ex-military and security figures, diplomats, scholars and Middle East experts are working together with Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and have recently developed a regional diplomatic proposal to resume negotiations that leverages the Arab peace initiative and the Israeli peace initiative. The spread is wide and deep. President al-Sisi of Egypt can see the rightness of this for the region and for his 90 million people, and is encouraging us. The aim is that in this whole contiguous region, over one-third of all those living in the Middle East—150 million people—will find work, welfare, health and education and human rights.

As the report shows, we in the United Kingdom are in a unique position to move things forward, and it would be in our own interests to do so. We have expertise in education. British people helped to set up and develop the great universities in Israel, including the Weizmann Institute of Science, where I am a life governor, the Hebrew University, Ben-Gurion University, and the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. We are now working in Egypt, together with UK universities, to build a new university on 200 acres of land in Cairo, with 30,000 students in year five. I declare an interest as an adviser to Knowledge City Cairo.

In health, media, the arts and, of course, business, the UK has a unique soft power. We can help triangulate partnerships. For example, Egypt has the best long staple cotton in the world. The noble Lord, Lord Alliance, has worked for five years with Manchester University on a research project that shows that now is the time to regenerate the Lancashire textile manufacturing industry, using Egyptian cotton. Israel is the world expert in these technologies and the farming methods. We are helping them all to work together.

The United Kingdom is uniquely placed to give assistance to these processes. The report suggests that we should not be trying to influence people by laying down rules and telling them what we believe is right. We have made too many mistakes like that in the past. However, we have the skills to be able to host and facilitate complex conversations at all levels to help people reach a consensus, and all these people would feel comfortable and safe here in the United Kingdom and here in these premises. In 2004, I hosted, here on the Estate, senior officials from 22 Arab countries who agreed the Arab peace initiative in 2004.

I am suggesting that Her Majesty’s Government, together with us in Parliament, set up a system to host a series of meetings with people horizontally from across the region and within the nations vertically, from top to bottom, so that those people can feel comfortable and safe and discuss projects and help to meld them into an overall, cohesive plan. The report is a good basis for us to kick off such a project. Let us do it.