North Africa and the Near and Middle East

Richard Burden Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will take three more interventions, and then I must conclude my remarks.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm one thing and give his views on another? In relation to the Quartet’s call for proposals, will he confirm that the Palestinians have put forward proposals but Israel has so far failed to do so? Will he give his views—perhaps he is going to do this in his speech anyway—on the unity talks that are taking place between Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mashal? Does he agree that the important thing is to do everything possible to ensure that Hamas is brought into the peace process instead of trying to seek excuses to keep it outside the process?

[Mr Hague]

I am not aware that either side has yet presented proposals that meet the Quartet’s requirements of 26 January on borders and security to that level of detail. We look to Hamas to change its own behaviour; that is the way for it to bring itself into a peace process. We have looked to Palestinian reconciliation before, and we have been on the brink of it before, and now there is new discussion of that. It is important for a Palestinian authority that is the basis of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah to include independent figures, to be committed to non-violence, to be committed to a two-state solution, and to accept previous agreements of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. That is how we will judge such an authority.

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[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I do not know how to follow the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who is a west midlands colleague of mine.

I welcome this debate and in particular the way in which the Foreign Secretary opened it. Even though I have some differences with the Government on their non-vote on Palestinian recognition, as was clear from the last statement on the middle east, I have been impressed by the willingness of the Minister and the Foreign Secretary to engage on that issue and to provide regular briefings. I am sure that that is welcomed by hon. Members on both sides of the House.

There was a very interesting speech by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), which I will comment on in a minute. I am not sure that I entirely followed his analysis on Iran, but he made some telling points on a number of other areas. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) made some important points that we should all heed on Bahrain and Syria.

I would like to say a few words on Syria. All of us, particularly those with a keen interest in the middle east, have been appalled by the level of repression and violence by the Assad regime. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington said, the Syrian people have showed incredible bravery and fortitude in standing up to that in the most appalling of circumstances. He was right—this has been said in the messages that I have been getting as well—that one of the most important things that we can do is to show the Syrian people that they are not an afterthought, but that we are with them. It is important that we help to keep their morale up. He was absolutely right that that is one of the important points about the Arab League initiative. I hope that the sanctions bite and are effective, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley is correct that we need to think beyond those sanctions as well. The statement that they have made is that the situation is a concern not simply to the outside world but to the Arab world itself, and that the Arab world will not stand for what is going on in Syria.

In Egypt, as we have heard, the polls are open for a general election, which I am sure we all welcome. However, we have to bear it in mind that there are parties that are boycotting the election because of the context in which it is taking place, and that people are still in Tahrir square voicing disquiet about how those elections could turn out. If the Muslim Brotherhood wins or gets the largest single number of votes, as seems likely, it will be really important that it carries through what it has said about recognising that democracy in Egypt has to be for all shades of opinion, secular as well as Islamist. That will need to be reflected in the future constitutional settlement.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend comment on the case of the 26-year-old Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil, who is now in his third month of a hunger strike? He was one of the first bloggers and the first Egyptians to say that the army and bits of the Muslim Brotherhood may be coming together. It is the army that is sending thousands of Egyptians to prison, with military courts and 93% conviction rates. That young man may die and be sacrificed as a martyr to the fact that the Egyptian army will not accept the will of the Egyptian people.

[Richard Burden]

My right hon. Friend draws attention to a very brave individual, who is one of many in Tahrir square and beyond. Everyone recognised when the Mubarak regime fell that there were close ties between that regime and the military. Nevertheless, the military were also seen as a national force who were not moving against the people. That is one of the tragedies about what has been happening in Egypt. The fact that things have not moved as people in Tahrir square and beyond wanted them to is a source of profound regret, and that is what is being said in Tahrir square today. I hope that not only the Muslim Brotherhood but, as he says, the military themselves take that on board in the context of the elections. The military in Egypt can be a force for national unity, but they have to change their approach from the one they have adopted in recent weeks and months.

The Muslim Brotherhood is clearly an influential force in Egypt, and in other parts of the Arab world in north Africa and the middle east. Political Islam is a potent force there, and again, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington made an important point about that. If Members look for political symmetry between my views and those of the Muslim Brotherhood, they will have great difficulty in finding any points of contact. However, he was right to suggest that success for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood are a disaster for groups such as al-Qaeda and the Salafist tradition of political Islam. We must bear that in mind, and it is why the Government are correct to look to open up engagement with political Islamist forces, whether in north Africa or elsewhere.

We recognise that such engagement is necessary in north Africa, for instance in Egypt and Tunisia, and perhaps—who knows?—in creating a dialogue in Jordan. As chair of the all-party group on Jordan, I welcome the visit of King Abdullah to the House the other week, which showed that there is a chance for greater engagement as Jordan continues its reform programme. That sends a clear message that involvement by the UK in the formation of political parties in Jordan is to be welcomed as it moves towards reform. I hope that the Minister will say something about what more we can do on that. However, if we see that engagement with political Islam is important in all those places, we cannot suddenly put the shutters up as a matter of principle if the country involved is Palestine, because the bit of the Muslim brotherhood involved is called Hamas rather than the Muslim Brotherhood.

At the moment, there is a chance of a different way forward in relation to Israel and Palestine. Talks have been taking place in Cairo between Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Khaled Mashal of Hamas about a possible reconciliation between those two parties. Anybody who knows about Palestine knows that both Hamas and Fatah, and both political Islam and secular organisations, are part of the reality of Palestinian politics. If we are to get to the stage of a two-state solution and enduring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as I am sure the whole House wants, the peace deal has to reach out to both those traditions. It has to include political Islam as well as secular forces.

In the same way, we could not say that the only people we wanted to talk to in Israel were those who would generally be regarded as being in the peace camp. We have to recognise that the reality of Israeli politics also includes people such as Mr Lieberman, whose views are hardly the most progressive in the world—some would say that they are racist. It includes groups such as Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud. If we accept that in relation to engagement with Israel, we have to do so in relation to Palestine as well.

That gives a choice in relation to the reconciliation talks. There have been fairly clear signals coming out of those talks, as there have been from Hamas not for months but for years, about its involvement or acquiescence in a peace settlement. We would be totally foolish to ignore those signals. Yet somehow, the international community has got itself into a position of trying to put preconditions on the involvement of Hamas in talks. That was why I asked the Foreign Secretary a question about the matter earlier. In practice, those preconditions seem to have been designed not to encourage Hamas to come into peace talks but to find ways of keeping it out. Hurdles have been erected so that we can work out whether Hamas has jumped high enough, rather than our understanding what it means and responding when it offers truces and unilaterally declares hudnas. The term “hudna” has huge importance in Islam.

If we want to see peace between Israel and Palestine, a more subtle approach is important, and we cannot have that unless we are prepared to discuss matters and have dialogue. I think most diplomats would understand that dialogue and discussion do not necessarily mean the same as negotiations—negotiations can come later—but are an important start to the process by which negotiations can happen.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I compliment my hon. Friend on the huge amount of work that he has done for many years on the issues facing the Palestinian people. Does he agree that there is an element of double standards here? Israel, the Quartet, the UN and the west in general all have discussions with Hamas and its representatives at times and negotiate with it, hence the release of Corporal Shalit in exchange for a large number of Palestinian prisoners. Is it not time to move on so that there are proper talks and proper recognition instead of the current rather unfortunate stand-off, which has lasted too long?

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Shalit prisoner swap is a recent example, and there was engagement with Hamas in relation to the release of Alan Johnston, the British journalist, a while ago. It is true that there are double standards, and if there is one thing that really gets to ordinary Palestinians and people throughout the Arab world, and to an awful lot of people beyond, it is the fact that, when it comes to Israel and Palestine, we suddenly adopt a different set of standards from those that we would see as absolutely incontrovertible anywhere else. That undermines our credibility and influence in that part of the world, and it undermines the peace process rather than taking it forward.

These are not theoretical questions. We have heard, just in the past few days, that simply because Hamas and Fatah are talking together, which might lead to reconciliation, Israel has threatened to cut off water and electricity supplies to Gaza—collective punishment of an entire population because their political leaders are talking together. Now, we either say something about that or we do not. We either take a firm stand on that or we do not. I know which side of the fence I am on.

That point does not just apply to dealing with political Islam. It was not long ago that any time anyone urged dialogue or engagement with Hamas, the call came from Israel that that would be beyond the pale and was impossible because they were terrorists. However, if it was just those nice people from Fatah or the PLO, such as Abu Mazen—Mahmoud Abbas—we could deal with them. But what has been the crime that Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah and the secular organisations have committed recently? Their crime has been to go to the United Nations and say, “Just give us the same rights as you have given Israel for 63 years.” From the reaction of Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel and, sadly, the United States—and, even more sadly, of some people in this Chamber—it might be thought that those organisations had somehow declared war on Israel. The approach to the United Nations was described as “a unilateral move”. I cannot think of an organisation that is more multilateral than the United Nations.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have listened carefully to the comments that my hon. Friend has made about Hamas’s involvement in the peace process. Does he maintain his position in the light of a statement made by a senior Hamas leader in Gaza in October, who said,

“We are not going to accept Israel as the owner of 1 sq centimetre because it is a fabricated state”?

[Richard Burden]

That does not alter my view at all. My hon. Friend has illustrated precisely the point that I was making. On both sides of the debate, we can all produce quote after quote to give us an excuse not to engage in dialogue; to decide that our side is right; to decide that the other side are not worth talking to. It is Hamas now, but she may have made a few speeches a few years ago saying the same kind of thing about Yasser Arafat or about Fatah. That does not get us anywhere. It does not get me anywhere to say, because I can produce a load of quotes from someone like Lieberman—or even the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Netanyahu—that they should be kicked out of negotiations, even if we all then pat ourselves on the back and say that we had done a good job.

If we are serious about peace, we have to contribute to peace. It is an old cliché, but it is right—peace is made not between friends, but between enemies. Unless we are prepared to try to reach out, not to our enemies, but to the enemies in the middle east and try to get them talking, what are we doing other than just acting as cheerleaders for one side or the other?

I was in Israel and Palestine last week. The situation there never loses its capacity to shock. Settlement building is continuing apace, in defiance of international law and despite having been condemned eight times in six months —or is it six times in eight months—by the Government. I know that the Minister is aware of the issue, but I ask him to pay particular regard to an area which became known as Area C in the Oslo process, which is one of the more rural areas of the west bank, and the encroachment of settlements and the dispossession of Palestinians there. When maps of the future Palestinian state are discussed, the focus is often on towns—on Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Tulkarm. All those places are important, but so too are the bits in between and the people who live there.

As we speak, Bedouin who are already refugees—in the main, they come from the Negev in what is now Israel and have been living in the west bank for decades—face forced displacement and dispossession to make way for settlements. I visited the school of Khan al Ahmar, just outside Jerusalem, which is under threat of demolition. There are two petitions going on, one to demolish the Khan al Ahmar school and one to demolish the Khan Al Ahmar community. One petition comes from the settlement just behind the area and one from the Israeli civil Administration in the west bank. That community, including the civilians—in fact, they are all civilians—and the children, face dispossession. Forced displacement of people by an occupying power is illegal under international law. We should not be scared to say that, nor to require Israel to abide by international law.

Even if those Bedouin were forcefully displaced to a palace it would be wrong. But the proposal is not to displace them to a palace. Instead, Israel proposes to displace them to a site next to Jerusalem’s municipal rubbish dump. I went to that rubbish dump and I saw the pipes that allow methane to escape. I saw a tanker appear, belching sewage from its back, and I saw where the land is being levelled to put Bedouin communities within 500 metres of the dump. As far as I know, that contravenes all health and safety regulations in that area.

Israel is beginning to notice the growing international condemnation of this proposal. It is no accident that access to the rubbish dump is now being blocked off by security blocks like those seen in other parts of the west bank. They have now appeared at the entrances to the rubbish dump—perhaps it has suddenly become a security risk. It may in fact be about stopping foreign visitors—and brave Israelis—from going there to bear witness to what is going on.

These things are wrong, and we should not be scared to say so. Settlement building is also dismantling the chances of a two-state solution before our eyes. The settlement building is not just displacing people to make way for settlers: it is increasingly severing the west bank into cantons or Bantustans that will not be viable as a state—unless we stop it. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House, whether we consider ourselves friends of Palestine or of Israel, will demand that that process stops.

My final point is about child prisoners. We have already mentioned the prisoner swap that rightly led to the release of Gilad Shalit and of some 500 Palestinian prisoners. The second phase of that prisoner swap will take place over the coming weeks. There are 150 Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, but so far, none of those is scheduled to be part of that prisoner swap. Several recent delegations to the west bank and Israel—organised by the Britain-Palestine all-party group, which I chair, and other organisations—have been to the Israeli military courts where those children are tried. Like other hon. Members, I had already read the testimonies about how the laws applying to Palestinian children are different from those applying to Israeli children; about how Palestinian children are tried in military courts, but Israeli children, even in the occupied territories, are tried in civilian courts; about how many Palestinian children are given bail compared with how many Israeli children are given bail. But I was not prepared for the sight in a military prison—one of the most secure compounds I have ever visited—of 14-year-old boys shuffling in wearing leg-irons and handcuffs for their court hearings. All members of the all-party parliamentary group who were on that visit made the decision that we were not prepared to shut up about this. Something had to be done. Whatever one’s views on the occupation, on Israel and on the peace process, shackling 14-year-old boys is wrong. It is against the UN convention on the rights of the child and it is inhuman.

[Ann Clwyd]

Earlier this year, I was invited by the United Nations to a conference in Vienna on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. It was the first time that I could remember the UN holding a conference with such a title. There were testimonies from people that made exactly the same point as my hon. Friend. Children are quite often charged without having a responsible adult present or legal representation. The stories that we heard were very similar to those he is describing now. It is an absolute disgrace that many of these children are in prison simply for throwing stones.

[Richard Burden]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The biggest number of accusations is for throwing stones. A range of human rights organisations, including Israeli human rights organisations as well as Palestinian and international ones, and the United Nations have amassed loads of evidence showing how children are visited and arrested in the middle of the night and painfully tied with a single plastic cord in violation of Israeli army procedures. The issue of how the children are interrogated and who is allowed to be present is a matter of real concern. Interrogations are not video recorded. Children continue to be denied bail in about 90% of cases, and many are detained in prisons outside the occupied territories in violation of article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention. Those things are wrong.

Even though I thought I knew a fair bit about child prisoners in Palestine, I came across something last week that astonished me even more. I spoke to some ex-detainees in Bethlehem. Most of them came from the town of Hebron or thereabouts. They recounted some of the things that my right hon. Friend has said, that I have said and that the UN has reported, but I wanted to pursue this issue of why they were shackled and had leg irons on inside a prison.

I said to the young boys, “When did they put these leg irons on you? When did they shackle you?” They replied, “Before we went into the court and before we went into the prison.” I said, “You were detained, though. You were already in the prison, weren’t you?” They replied, “No, we were in the other prison.”

Many of those children are held not in Ofer prison, in which they are tried, but in other prisons which could be on the west bank or in Israel itself. The young man who was talking to me was held in Tilmond prison near Haifa and he said that that was where they put the shackles and leg irons on him. He wanted to talk to me about other things. He thought that his experience was quite normal. I said, “Hang on, how long were you in those leg irons and shackles before you got to the prison?” I thought that it would have taken one to two hours to drive to Ofer prison, but he said, “About nine hours.”

At that stage, I thought that I was getting some exaggeration because it is nothing like a nine-hour drive between Haifa and Ofer prison, which is between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He said, “No, we don’t go straight there. We get picked up at about 1 o’clock in the morning and the prison transport takes us down to the Negev where we pick up some more from a prison there. It then takes us back to Ramleh where we have a break for the driver and then we go on to Ofer prison. It takes about eight or nine hours.”

I asked the young boy whether he was shackled the whole time. He said, “Yes.” Other young men around the room nodded in agreement and said that that had happened to them as well. I asked the young boy where they were being held. He said, “We were in this kind of prison bus which had rooms in.” I assumed that it was like prison transport with compartments. He said, “It was a bit overcrowded, but we just had to stay there with our shackles and leg irons.” I asked, “What happened if you wanted to go to the toilet?” He replied, “We just had to do it where we were.” This is the 21st century. Irrespective of our views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, are we honestly saying that those sorts of things should go on?

I know that the Minister and the Government are concerned about this matter. I welcome the work that both our ambassador in Tel Aviv and our consular-general in east Jerusalem have been doing to raise awareness of these and many other issues. There is another inquiry going on at the moment into the condition of child prisoners. This is an issue that must not go away because it is shocking to me and shocking to anyone who sees it. It is against the UN convention on the rights of the child and it is inhuman.

I have been raising these matters over a period of time —perhaps I have been a bit of a bore on the matter— but it is only in the past few days and weeks that we have seen a change in profile and a number of achievements. Israel has equalised the age at which a child is classified an adult—from 16 to 18. The age is now equal between Israelis and Palestinians, which is good. It would not have happened had it not been for the pressure that has been building up. The number of Palestinian children in Israeli jails is now 150; it was 164 a few weeks ago, so I think the Israelis are susceptible to pressure.

What is incredible is that there has been a campaign of hate, misrepresentation and libel against me and others for having dared to raise this issue. To some extent that goes with the territory, and I am not in the firing line; I am a British MP. I can speak in this place. It is easy for me to do so and it is my responsibility to do so. None the less, there are people for whom we do need to raise our voices. I am talking not just about the Palestinian children but the people who are prepared to speak out both in Palestine and in Israel. I am talking about those who are members of groups such as Peace Now, B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence; the brave soldiers who have seen the conflict first hand and have said that things must change. They are prepared to say that the kind of stuff that Israel and Netanyahu put out in the outside world does not reflect the reality on the ground and that there has to be a different way. Those people are the best of Israel.

Very often the Israeli Government and lobbyists for Israel talk about the danger of the de-legitimisation of Israel. Even members of those groups, Israeli Jews, are accused of de-legitimising Israel because they speak out on what is going on. In fact, those groups are protecting Israel’s legitimacy and democracy and they need our support now because laws are being put through the Knessset that will gag them. Any organisation that the Israeli state regards as political will be outlawed from getting foreign funding of over 20,000 Israeli shekels—about £6,000. All the evidence points to the fact that the ones that will be regarded as political will be the human rights organisations. It will not affect the settler groups that get millions from the United States and elsewhere; it will affect the human rights organisations. Legislation is also being passed that is doing strange things to Israel’s libel laws that will try to gag people from speaking out. There are even laws being passed about how judges and justices are chosen that will restrict the ability of such groups to petition the courts in Israel. Those groups need our support. Our ambassador has been forthright on this matter and I commend him for that.

My appeal is not just to people who agree with me on Palestine but to those who regard themselves as friends of Israel. Are they simply friends of whatever the Israeli Government happen to do or say at the time, or are they friends of Israel, of Israeli democracy, of dissent in Israel as well as of the establishment of Israel? If they are, I hope that they will join me and people throughout the world in standing up for Israeli democracy. B’Tselem and other organisations are bravely saying, “We will not be silenced.” We should not allow them to be silenced either.

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[Mrs Ellman]

I acknowledge that the Palestinian Authority has played a constructive role in the attempt to make progress. That is clear from the way in which it has worked with the Quartet and others on the west bank, the dramatic increase in prosperity there, and the way in which—again, working with the Quartet—it has developed its security forces and the civil administration. That could easily and quickly make Palestine into a viable and successful country, if only the political negotiations could make progress. I also think it important for the Palestinian Authority to recognise that the solution lies in urgent negotiations rather than declarations at the United Nations which, in practice, will not solve any of the practical and difficult problems that need to be addressed. The Palestinian Authority should be urged to return to those negotiations.

[Richard Burden]

I know that my hon. Friend is not happy about the reference to the United Nations—she and I disagree about that—but may I invite her to answer the question that was put by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood)? Irrespective of whether she feels, or Israel feels, that it is a good idea for the Palestinians to go to the United Nations, does she think that it helps the peace process for Israel to respond by continuing and accelerating its settlement building, and by cutting off tax revenues that are owed to the Palestinian Authority but are being held by Israel?

[Mrs Ellman]

I do not think that those activities are helpful to the quest for peace. I think that the only way in which progress can be made is for the Palestinian Authority to be urged to return to the negotiating table. It is a great shame that when it stopped negotiating and said that it wanted a settlement freeze—I considered that to be a reasonable request, and indeed there was a settlement freeze—the Palestinians did not return to the negotiating table.

It is important to recognise that the role and the views of Hamas do matter. Quotations from Hamas are important, because they reflect the reality. Hamas still does not recognise the validity of the existence of the state of Israel. I am not talking about an argument about borders; it does not recognise the validity of the state of Israel. That is shown clearly in its charter, which states that it is its religious duty to have an Islamic state over the whole of the area in which Israel now exists. That has nothing to do with 1967 borders.

The charter also refers to Jews—not Israelis—running the world and controlling the media, and contains other diatribes against Jews, not just Israelis. As I mentioned earlier, Hamas leaders in Gaza have recently stated

“we are not going to accept Israel as the owner of one square centimeter because it is a fabricated state.”

Those are not just words while Hamas’s rockets continue to rain down on Israeli citizens. If it changes its position, we shall be in a different situation, and I certainly agree that a different approach must be taken. However, no one who believes that Israel’s existence should be guaranteed can accept that it should negotiate about its existence. Yes, it should negotiate about boundaries since 1967, but it should not be called on to negotiate about its existence. Unless the person requesting that is one of the people whom I mentioned earlier, who by “occupied lands” is really referring to Israel’s existence, it is land since 1948.

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[Mrs Ellman]

The whole process brought about changes, but there was acceptance only when Sinn Fein changed its position, and I repeat that I am not aware of its having had a theological determination to eliminate the existence of the British state. Hamas not only has a theological determination to eliminate the state of Israel, but is acting on that by sending its rockets over.

[Richard Burden]

I think I might differ with my hon. Friend on her history of what happened in relation to Northern Ireland, but may I put two questions to her? First, does she accept that, although some things such as the Hamas charter remain as they were and the phrases she quotes are no doubt genuine, there have also been indications coming out of Hamas that, while it may not recognise the state of Israel, it could live with living alongside the state of Israel? Is she aware of that shift, and does she think we should explore and encourage it and see where it can go? Secondly, I agree with her that Israel should not have to negotiate its own existence, but what does she think it sounds like to a Palestinian when she and others say a Palestinian state can only come about through negotiation?

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. The state of Israel came about because it was internationally recognised—[Interruption.] Following a number of commissions looking into the question of whether there should be a state of Israel, the UN put forward specific boundaries following the work of a special committee that had considered that matter over a number of years, and supported that. That was accepted by the state of Israel, but it was not accepted by the Arab states, which then invaded Israel. That was the origin of how the state of Israel came into existence.

I am aware that from time to time some elements of Hamas are said to have made statements to the effect that they would be prepared to live with Israel, but I cannot think that any state would take that seriously when at the same time much more senior people consistently state they wish to see the end of Israel and, indeed, start to act to do so by sending their rockets, directed at Israeli civilians. We must also bear it in mind that Hamas is not acting alone, but is backed by Iran in respect of training and arms—and Iran is, of course, repeatedly threatening the annihilation of Israel. I therefore think Israel has every right to treat Hamas very sceptically indeed, unless there is an explicit and profound change in its position.