Palestinian Territories

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Polak. There can be no doubt that the Palestinians deserve better. I feel as deeply as anyone about their parlous position, especially those 2 million citizens who exist in a limbo of deprivation in Gaza. But where I depart from some speakers is in ascribing their terrible situation entirely to Israel’s actions. Of course, Israel’s Government are far from innocent, but the Palestinians, and in particular Hamas, must bear some responsibility.

We should remember that in 1947 the UN partition plan divided Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. The Jews accepted what was an almost indefensible thin sliver of land along the coast, while the Arabs immediately rejected what then was a very much larger state, which included a huge piece of land that later became Jordan. What a huge mistake that was. It would have avoided so much pain, bloodshed and death on both sides, and it is unfortunately the case that the Palestinians have continued to reject the very idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Hamas constantly preaches death and destruction for the Jews, and even the seemingly more moderate Mr Abbas has never accepted the Jewishness of Israel. One only has to glance at the Palestinian Authority school textbooks to see how they are feeding their children a frightening anti-Semitic diet.

It is little wonder that attitudes in Israel have hardened and, unfortunately, turned to the right. It is hardly surprising, too, to find that the two-state solution is in very cold storage, when Palestinian attitudes have stalled and one looks at the threats that Israelis see surrounding them on all sides. While the UK Government’s policy is to support a two-state solution—quite rightly in my opinion, as it is the only show in town—for now it is impossible to imagine that it can be achieved when Iran constantly spouts a virulent anti-Semitic diatribe and a keen desire to see Israel and the Jews completely destroyed. The history of the Jews makes them take it very seriously when someone threatens to kill them off. Iran is creeping ever closer to Israel’s northern border, while its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, is pointing over 100,000 armed and increasingly accurate missiles at Israel, ready to fire when Iran dictates. Of course, there is also Hamas, funded and armed by Iran, posing its own threat to Israel from Gaza, not on the same scale, of course, but bad enough for local Israeli residents to rush to their shelters every day. While Israel builds shelters, Hamas builds tunnels.

So with all that going on around them, Israelis are not going to be too happy to have yet another independent Arab state on its long border with the West Bank without a reliable security arrangement. They see that an independent Palestine would soon be vulnerable to an influx of belligerent extremists, probably allies of Iran, as they seek to take over the whole of the Middle East. While Hamas knows that it cannot throw Israel into the sea, as it threatens, it can provoke the sort of response that brings opprobrium on Israel from the international community that we have heard about today. The more Hamas pushes its citizens into the firing line, the better—and the more they refuse medical aid from Israel, and the more they blow up the Kerem Shalom crossing to prevent aid from Israel arriving, both of which they did recently, the more they gain sympathy for their plight. A year or so ago, Hamas prevented the construction of a desalination plant in Gaza, built by UNESCO, because UNESCO wanted to use Israeli technology.

So where are we with the two-state solution? The details have been on the table for many years, but we seem no nearer. Meanwhile, the Palestinians continue to suffer. The only glimmer of hope seems to be the Arab peace initiative, proposed by the Saudis, who may be able to exert some pressure on both sides to reach an agreement. The peace dividend is enormous. I fear that it will be entirely dependent on new and braver leaders on both sides.

United States: Foreign Policy

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown.

The virtually universal view of President Trump—at least around this Chamber and outside it—is that he is unbelievably inept at best and a malign force at worst. Internationally, he has finished up being the most reviled President for very many years. He campaigned on a platform of isolationism and protectionism mixed with a dose of racism, in order, he said, “to make America great again”. However, all he has succeeded in doing is leaving my American friends and relations wringing their hands in despair over his domestic policies, and he has brought America’s standing in the world to the lowest level for very many years. However, considerable dangers follow hard on the heels of those views of the man and the opinions that are now projected on to American values as a whole. Despite its President, America remains the dominant voice of western democracy, whatever Trump says or does.

At a time when there are huge dangers lurking around the world—as many have spoken about—when a Russia led by a predatory Putin is patrolling our skies and seas, intent on expanding his influence, when Chinese versions of civil liberties are inflicted on millions of their citizens, when a nuclear North Korea is making all sorts of warlike noises, when Iran, with its sponsorship of terrorism and untrammelled ballistic missile programme, is so unstable and the whole of the Middle East is in turmoil—when all this going on, we in the UK need to think very carefully indeed about jettisoning America and what it stands for when we and the rest of the democratic world need it most. We should especially think about that carefully when, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, emphasised, we need to share intelligence. When America itself needs support, we should be careful how we react to its President’s outbursts. As we think of our long-term, post-Brexit trade needs, it is worth remembering that at worst he will be there only for eight years, and at best for four years, or maybe less.

However, there is one of Trump’s recent interventions on which I would like to focus—his proposal to move his embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. On this issue I am afraid that I must part company with one or two earlier speakers. It certainly has been the focus of many knee-jerk responses in the media but, surprisingly, with rather less dismay in the Middle East. Even the Palestinian response was muted, when it became obvious that protesters at the Damascus Gate were outnumbered by the TV and media reporters standing around. Provocative it was, but was it a profound change of policy given the facts of the case? First, it is worth remembering that west Jerusalem is where the Israeli Parliament and all its government departments are sited, together with its Supreme Court. It is faintly ridiculous to see ambassadors and their staff spending hours travelling from their embassies in Tel Aviv along the motorway to Jerusalem every day. The population of west Jerusalem is 95% Jewish and it is only in west Jerusalem that Trump is suggesting his embassy should be based.

East Jerusalem, on the other hand, is Arab by a large majority, and the Arab-Palestinian population there is growing. There is no way that Trump has proposed that the American embassy to Israel might be placed there. Now that would really be provocative. Indeed, he said in the same speech that the division between east and west Jerusalem would be entirely a matter for the two sides to agree between themselves. That was the second part of his speech, which was largely ignored. No matter that some Palestinians and Israelis speak of Jerusalem being their undivided capital, I cannot believe that any sensible person thinks that Israel will hand over western Jewish Jerusalem, with all its machinery of government, to Palestinian control, nor that it is to Israel’s advantage, in any way, to hang on to largely Palestinian east Jerusalem.

In truth, the battle is not about east and west Jerusalem and their burgeoning populations. It is about the Old City and specifically the Holy Basin, where the al-Aqsa mosque, so precious for the Muslims, and the Western Wall, so significant for the Jews, are sited. That is where the focus of all the most vital interests in Jerusalem lie and where there is so much mutual suspicion. President Trump did not say or imply anything about this most contentious of all the issues on Jerusalem. Resolution of who controls the Holy Basin has to await another day, perhaps another generation.

Moving an embassy to Jewish west Jerusalem seems to me rather less contentious. It recognises where Israel has placed its centre of government and does not preclude any negotiation between the two sides on what might happen to the rest of Jerusalem. This may be one of the few outpourings from President Trump with which I feel some agreement.

Middle East (IRC Report)

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and his committee are to be congratulated on this valuable report. I resonate to the very wise remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Helic.

It goes without saying that the situation across most of the Middle East is unstable and very dangerous. The committee has done a remarkable job in analysing many of the issues. The idea that we should do more to reach out, especially to the more pragmatic states in the region, is certainly very well made. The problem is, of course, that the issues change every day. The recent stand-off between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is but one example, while the dangerous flurry of activity across Syria’s border with northern Israel is of concern. Some things never change, of course; Iran’s continuing belligerent stance against the West in general continues unabated, and, while I agree that we should try to get the Iranians to behave towards their dissidents in a more humanitarian way and that we should maintain some sort of relationship with them, we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed. Their daily threats to annihilate Israel should be deeply worrying to us.

I will concentrate my remarks on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, where our efforts in the UK are, quite rightly, to press for a two-state solution. According to recent opinion polls, incidentally, that is also the strong and heartfelt desire of the majority of both the Israeli and the Palestinian population.

The question I raise is whether the tenor of the report will help or hinder the desired two-state solution. I fear that it may be unhelpful in one or two ways. If we are to be taken notice of by either the Israelis or the Palestinians, we have to be sure to be even-handed and unbiased one way or the other. In this, I fear that the report may not be as balanced as it might be. Inevitably, that will make its recommendations less acceptable and less likely to be taken notice of in the region.

The reason I say this is that, in focusing heavily on the settlements and settlements alone, the report may be missing a trick. Of course the settlements are problematic. They encroach on Palestinian land and make it difficult for the Palestinians to develop their own state, and I would not downplay their importance in any way. But I fear that that is far from the whole story and that there are many other causes of the failure to reach the two-state solution that we all want—and unfortunately they are missing from this otherwise excellent report.

Israel is hardly going to be convinced to withdraw from the settlements on the basis of its experience after it withdrew from Gaza and from four settlement blocks in the West Bank in 2003. That just brought out the worst that a belligerent Hamas could inflict on Israel: multiple rocket attacks and a charter that promised the annihilation of Israel and the Jews. The 10-month pause in settlement building a few years later by Mr Netanyahu, at the behest of the Americans, in the vain hope that Mr Abbas would resume negotiations, was far from encouraging.

Little wonder that my Israeli taxi driver—those drivers are never short of an opinion, nor are they inhibited from expressing it—said, “The Palestinians just want to drive us into the sea”. If Israel is to be encouraged to withdraw from settlements, it is unlikely to do so without something more positive from the Palestinians—but continuing incitement to terror and violence by Hamas and, I fear, by Fatah too, fails to offer any reassurance on that front. They will have to offer something that will give the Israelis confidence that their security will not be compromised if they simply withdraw. They will have to see the Palestinians be more open to the idea that Israel will not be able to accept all the refugees, now grown from the original 750,000 to about 5 million; that not all of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple, can become the capital—they may have to be satisfied with half of Jerusalem; and they will have to accept that Israel is a Jewish state, as Balfour and the British Government proposed 100 years ago.

Of course, all these ideas are not set in stone, and will have to be hammered out in direct negotiations between the two of them—yet there is little sign that Mr Abbas is willing even to start negotiations. That is why I fear that simply pressing the Israelis to withdraw from settlements in isolation from everything else that needs consideration is unlikely to be helpful. It is also unfortunate, too, that not much mention is made of the Arab peace plan emanating largely from Saudi Arabia. Should we not be doing more to encourage that?

Paragraph 247 of the report states:

“As political authority collapses in many Middle East countries, the UK needs a good working relationship with the remaining stable countries. We also recognise the shared interests: defence sales, non-defence commercial interests and trade, the fight against terrorism, and security of energy supply throughout the Gulf”.


This paragraph applies to the Gulf states, but could it not apply equally to Israel, a stable, democratic state with just as many shared interests that are enormously valued in the UK? The report talks elsewhere of the need to protect the Christian communities in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the number of Christians is rising.

I was pleased to read the Government’s response, with its stress on bilateral negotiations between the two parties. That seems to me more rational than the idea of internationally inspired negotiations that the report seems to stress. I hope that the Minister will consider that my remarks have been made in a constructive way towards the two-state solution that we all want.