UK Policy on the Middle East

Nick Boles Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I, too, welcome you to the Chair? You look very fine in it.

I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to his post, which I know he will undertake as well as he has undertaken every other post in which I have worked with him in the past. I congratulate my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), on his excellent maiden speech. The whole House knows that the finest things come in small packages.

In this first debate of the new Parliament on the middle east, and the first debate in which I have had a chance to take part, I did not want to get lost in the thicket of the detail of the current negotiation and the rights and wrongs of every issue. I wanted to take a little time to step back and tell the House why, ultimately, I count myself a friend of Israel, first and foremost, in the middle east. That is because I think of some fundamental truths.

In my maiden speech last week, I talked of the achievements of the Labour Government in establishing full equality for all people in the United Kingdom. Let us look at the middle east and ask ourselves, where in the middle east is it best to be a woman, or where in the middle east is it best to be gay? In Egypt, personal status laws discriminate harshly against women on marriage, custody of children and inheritance. In Jordan, a country which I consider to be a positive force and one where the current ruler is trying to take it forward, more than 20 women per annum, according to Amnesty International, are killed for breaking social taboos. Israel had a female Prime Minister before any party in Britain had even thought of it, and it nearly had another one last year—I rather wish it had—in Tzipi Livni.

Think about a gay person in the middle east. In Syria, it is not so bad—three years in prison. In Iran, a gay person would get the death penalty. In Israel, a gay person can rise to be a general in the armed forces, and just last Friday 100,000 people marched in Tel Aviv to celebrate the equality of gay people in Israel.

So then I ask myself, where in the middle east is it best to criticise the Government in public? In Syria, it is simply not possible, because the state controls every single aspect of the media. Reporters Without Borders calls Iran,

“the Middle East’s biggest prison for journalists”,

but it ranks Israel higher than the United States as a place for press freedom—44th in the world and first in the middle east.

Finally, I ask myself, where is it best in the middle east to belong to a religious or ethnic minority? In Syria, Kurds and Jews are not allowed to take any part at all in political life. In Iran, one cannot even go to university without passing an exam on Islamic ideology, and one cannot get a senior post in any organisation unless one belongs to the majority Shi’a group. In Israel, Israeli Arabs have always had all rights—the same as Israeli Jews—except for one: they do not have to serve in the armed forces, because the state of Israel recognises that it would be unfair to set them against their Arab brothers. However, they can vote and be elected, and many have been. There is even an Arab-Israeli serving on the supreme court in Israel.

So let us be clear: for all its errors and excesses, which I and the whole House see, Israel is an oasis in a desert—an oasis of freedom, democracy and human rights in the middle east. We therefore have to ask ourselves, why does Israel do those things that shock, pain and worry us all? Why does it feel driven to inflict on the people of Gaza what we all recognise, whether in law or not, as seemingly like collective punishment? The answer is very simple: it is not just faced but encircled by an enemy that wishes to destroy it.

So before the House pulls on its breeches and starts saddling up the high horse, let us remind ourselves of how we—this place, this ancient democracy, this ancient birthplace of freedom—reacted when we faced an existential threat. We interned or deported long-time residents of German and Italian origin and refugees from Nazi Germany—to our everlasting shame. However, we did it, and with the approval of this House. The Americans did the same with Japanese Americans and German Americans, so we should be very careful before we start lecturing a nation that was built by the survivors of a genocide, which took less than five years to kill more than the current population of Jews in Israel.

Rather than lecturing and sitting on that high horse, we should ask ourselves, what practical things can we do instead of the huffing, the puffing and the futile outrage? I, too, welcome the role of Tony Blair in the middle east and in Palestine at the moment, so, first, we should do everything that we can to support the Palestinian Authority in the west bank and, in particular, Prime Minister Fayyad, so that Palestinian people can see an alternative to Hamas which delivers security, jobs and a normal life. That is all that they want. Secondly, we must do everything we can to encourage Turkey to remain aligned with Europe and the west, and not to feel that we do not want it in the European Union or as part of the western alliance. Turkey is key to us and to Israel, and we must ensure that Turkey knows it.

Finally, we must confront Iran. I am very glad that the Government played such a pivotal role in achieving the sanctions that the UN agreed last week. The middle east is a terrible area of the world, with so many problems, but in ending I share the optimism that some Members have expressed. Yes, the situation seems full of despair, but let us look at the progress that has been made. There is a peace treaty with Egypt, and I should point out that Israel has never attacked a nation with which it has a full peace treaty. There is a peace treaty also with Jordan, and across the Israeli political system it is commonly accepted that a two-state solution with an independent state for Palestinians is the right solution. I feel that progress is being made, and further progress can be made if we quit the lectures and just get down to supporting our friends and helping them to come to an agreement.