Middle East and North Africa

Debate between Robert Halfon and Richard Burden

Thursday 17th July 2014 Westminster Hall

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

May I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? I add my thanks and tributes to those of others to the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). I pay tribute to his work as middle east Minister, a role that he approached with great sincerity and sensitivity. He has always dealt with me with the utmost courtesy, and I thank him for that.

[Robert Halfon]

On a point of order, Mr Davies. I should have mentioned my entry in the register of Members’ interests in my remarks. I apologise for interrupting.

[Richard Burden]

The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and I disagree on many things, and we will disagree in this debate, but frankly there is no reason to caricature the views of those who stand up for the rights of people in Gaza as them not being bothered about the rights of Palestinians in Yarmouk, or about what is going on in Syria. If he looks at the record, that is simply not true.

I will concentrate my remarks on what is going on in Gaza for no other reason than time. I will pose a few questions. Does Israel have the right to self-defence? Yes. Do Palestinians have the right to self-defence? Yes. Can what either the Israeli Government are doing or what Hamas has been doing in the past two weeks be credibly described as self-defence? No. Have the actions of either made the people each said they were defending any safer? Well, there are some answers to that. I will quote Emily Hauser, an American Israeli, who wrote recently in Haaretz:

“I have lived under missile attack, and I have family under attack in the south right now. I do not for one moment doubt Israel’s right to self-defense. But even if we set aside the damage and forget the dead, if we remain incurious about the impact both might have on our enemy’s will to compromise—even if all we consider is sheer efficacy—how can we look at this history and believe that repeating past failures will keep the Jewish State safe? Are you safe now?”

That speaks volumes. If we look on the other side, the answer was given yesterday when those four children had their lives snuffed out while doing nothing other than playing football on the beach. If hon. Members have not read Peter Beaumont’s eyewitness account of that in The Guardian, I suggest they do so.

The point is that it has to stop; the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire said that in introducing the debate. Nobody will do the Palestinians or the Israelis any service in this debate by justifying rockets or trying to justify the scale of the attacks that Israel has been making on Gaza. The question is how we can help to stop it.

The first thing is to be serious. We have just heard that there has been a humanitarian ceasefire for a few hours. There was also a very strange ceasefire a day or two ago, of a kind that I have never come across before. It seemed to be announced without even the Americans being involved, which is rather strange in the circumstances. It was announced late one night and accepted by Israel the next morning, when Hamas said it had not even been directly approached and had heard about the ceasefire from the media. If people are serious about ceasefires, they pre-cook them and make sure the back channels work, but those channels did not work on that occasion.

I have been trying to put some feelers out as well—not to Hamas directly, but through people who I know are talking to it. One thing that has come back from that—not from hard-liners, who reject the idea altogether, but from people who are saying that they might be prepared to consider it—is that if a ceasefire is agreed, it will need to involve Islamic Jihad and other militant groups, as well as Hamas, and Hamas will be relied on to police that ceasefire. How will it do that while it is itself the target of air strikes? We do not have to hold a writ for Hamas to work out that there may be a point there. That is why people should use the back channels and take the process seriously, and not just announce things. That is not just my opinion; hon. Members can read the article on ABC News by Ali Weinberg, who said that some of the things going on around that ceasefire were curious—I will say no more than that.