Middle East and North Africa

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Friday 11th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, I also thank the Government for allowing us to have this debate, and congratulate the Minister on his masterly survey of dramatic events in the Middle East over the past few weeks. Although attention has understandably been focused on those events, I agree with other noble Lords who have said that we must not allow this to distract us from the very real and urgent crisis facing the Middle East peace process. This is a moment of potential disaster for Israel and for the credibility of the United States Administration.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davies, will allow me to refer to him as my longstanding friend, but I must take issue with his remark—if I understood it correctly—that the one thing about Mr Netanyahu is that he at least has something to say. I remind the noble Lord of something that Mr Netanyahu said in 1989: that his Government should have used the world’s preoccupation with the repression of popular demonstrations in China as an opportunity to carry out mass expulsions of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories; so he has had something to say. Since that time, far from the uprooting of existing settlements, we have had an exponential increase in illegal settlement activity, including the conversion of outposts into full blown settlements and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem without adequate or effective resistance from the White House.

We have already seen how popular demonstrations in Tunisia have been followed by even greater uprisings on the streets of Cairo. Calls for freedom and democracy in Egypt, and the anger which we heard on the news this morning at President Mubarak's refusal to leave, may well spread contagion throughout the region in the short term. Even if there is not a further intifada in Palestine, the calls for action to end at last the 43 year- old occupation and oppression of the Occupied Territories are likely to resound throughout the region. Unemployment rates in Palestine, particularly among the young, are as high as any in Egypt, Yemen or elsewhere in the Arab world. Not surprisingly, there is growing disenchantment on the Arab street with the concept of a two-state solution in the Middle East peace process, and increasing anger that the United States and its fellow members of the quartet have not only allowed the so-called road map to be torn up, but continued to reward Israel by pouring in vast quantities of unconditional military and financial assistance.

There is, sadly, too much evidence that Mr Netanyahu has now been allowed to reject the concept of a Palestinian state, and the promise of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. The real ambitions of the Netanyahu Government are becoming increasingly clear to the Arab world, not through WikiLeaks—few of us are in any position to judge the accuracy of its revelations—but through evidence in the press, on the internet and on Al-Jazeera that senior members of Mr Netanyahu's Government hope to turn Israel into an expansionist and Zionist state stretching, as Mr Ehud Barak has said publicly, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, if not to the banks of the Euphrates, as many of Israel's supporters including the Christian right claim. Incidentally, I do not propose to go into the Palestinian papers in any detail. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, who is not in his place, only that the Guardian’s shock and outrage was not so much at what he described as the well known Palestinian offers. Surely what shocked the Guardian and many of us was that Mrs Livni had apparently rejected all the offers.

There is a danger that the popular revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere will encourage and strengthen the growing political influence of Islamist resistance movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah, on which Iran may well seek to increase its influence. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Desai, for putting the Muslim Brotherhood into perspective. Current events show once again the folly of the quartet in refusing to talk to Hamas, particularly now that the Israeli press has reported—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, will be interested to hear this—a press conference by Hamas that explicitly accepts the right of Israel to exist as part of a peace settlement. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, has rightly reminded us that Hamas is a pluralist organisation. I hope that the Minister might today give the House some reason to hope for a change of mind on this question.

Clearly the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood in any future Egyptian Government would have an effect, both on Egypt’s relations with Israel and on the threat of Islamist extremism elsewhere in the region. However, let us acknowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood represents for many in Egypt and throughout the Arab world entirely justified support and sympathy for the resistance to Israeli occupation, whether in Gaza or elsewhere in the Palestinian territories. If the Israeli Government have, as I believe, rejected the idea of a two-state solution, the consequences for Israel’s future, peace in the Middle East and, indeed, Israel’s existence are dire indeed. Even Israel's Zionist advocates in the United States must surely realise that the concept of two states—of Palestine and Israel living peacefully side by side—is the only hope for the future security and very existence of the state of Israel.

I have heard it claimed, as implied by the noble Lord, Lord Luce, that the other Arabs are doing too little to support the Palestinian cause. However, I remind your Lordships that it is now several years since the Arab peace initiative was launched in Mecca, calling unanimously for a return to the 1967 borders in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to live in peace and security within those borders. So far there has barely been even an acknowledgement from the Israeli or United States Governments of that remarkable display of Arab unity.

The Minister said in his introduction that this is also a time of great opportunity. Unless we and our fellow members of the European Union take drastic and urgent action to persuade Mr Netanyahu and the United States Administration to change the dangerous course on which he seems to be embarked, our own national interests in the Middle East could also be in serious danger. Memories in the Arab world are very long. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, was quite right to remind us of the Sykes-Picot agreement. I am sure I have no need to remind your Lordships of Britain’s special and historic responsibility for Palestine as the heirs to the Balfour declaration. However, I must perhaps remind some of your Lordships of a passage in the declaration, which is often overlooked and has been so tragically ignored by successive Israeli Governments, that says,

“that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

The Foreign Secretary has rightly argued that it is not for others—whether the European Union or the United States—to interfere in the internal politics of Egypt or other sovereign states. However, the moribund Middle East peace process and Israel’s reluctance to participate in it are very much the international responsibility and interest of the European Union as a member of the quartet. I welcome, as my noble friend Lord Hannay did, the prospect of further talks between the European Union and the Israelis and Palestinians in Paris. I hope that the Minister can reassure the House that we are playing a full, if indirect, part in the efforts of the quartet, not just to get talks going again between the Palestinian and Israeli negotiators but to avert the very real and present danger for our interests if a two-state solution is seen to be no longer on the table.

On a point of detail, I argued in this House a week ago that HMG should find some way of underlining the urgency of progress towards the creation of a Palestinian state. One small way of doing that would be to upgrade the Palestinian general delegation in London to the status of a diplomatic mission. I hope that the Minister, when he winds up, will be able to tell us where that now stands.