Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I welcome this debate and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) on securing it. It gives us the opportunity to discuss what has been happening in Gaza.

I have been contacted by more than 800 constituents since Monday of last week, when, as we have been reminded, 60 people died in protests in Gaza and 2,771 were injured, 1,359 of them by live ammunition. The protests, which had been building up over a period of weeks, were provoked in part by the reckless decision of the United States to move its embassy to Jerusalem. I regret that that decision was taken and has been put into effect. It was predicted what would happen if that decision was taken, and that is precisely what has happened.

There are a variety of views about the rights and wrongs of what happened in Gaza on Monday last week. I want to quote Human Rights Watch, whose judgments are broadly accepted as fair. It summarises:

“Israel has a right to defend its borders, but shooting unarmed protesters who haven’t breached its frontier is disproportionate and illegal.”

I think that most of us would share that conclusion on the rights and wrongs of what happened.

My hon. Friend referred to the culpability of Hamas in all of this, and was absolutely right to do so. To pursue that point further, I will again quote Human Rights Watch on the contribution of Hamas to events last week. It said:

“Certainly Hamas has supported the protests in Gaza, where its control is palpable. Criticism of Hamas rule can be punishable by arrest and torture, as Human Rights Watch has documented. Hamas reviews the sermons at Gaza’s mosques, and those sermons now tell worshipers to join the demonstrations at the Gaza border. On ordinary days, Hamas police officers prevent demonstrators from coming within 1,000 feet of the border fence inside Gaza, the distance that Israel has declared to be a ‘no go zone.’ Since March 30, Hamas has allowed protesters through and hired buses to transport people to the demonstrations.”

Like my hon. Friend and other hon. Members, I affirm Hamas’s culpability in what is happening, but those observations underline the strength of Human Rights Watch’s conclusion that what happened on the part of the Israeli army was nevertheless disproportionate and illegal.

I visited Gaza a long time ago—13 years ago—with Christian Aid to look at the situation. At that time, it was very, very grim. I remember meeting families who could not get basic healthcare for their children, farmers whose everyday livelihood was being interfered with by petty restrictions and difficulties of one sort or another, and other people, such as a student on holiday from university who was stuck at the border crossing for a week and unable to go home, where she had hoped to spend her vacation. There were endless indignities and problems.

That was 13 years ago, and the position today is vastly worse. Under international law, Israel, as the occupying power in Gaza, has primary responsibility for meeting the humanitarian needs of Palestinians, but the position is dire. We have already been reminded that in 2012, the United Nations forecast that Gaza would be unliveable by 2020. In July, it published an update to that view. In his foreword, Robert Piper, the UN co-ordinator for humanitarian aid and development activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said that

“life for the average Palestinian in Gaza is getting more and more wretched.”

The report continued:

“Reviewing the indicators which in 2012 led the UN to question whether Gaza would become ‘unliveable’ by 2020, it is clear that very little progress has been made”

in the intervening five years, and said:

“Despite the warnings issued by the UN in 2012, Gaza has continued on its trajectory of de-development”.

When I visited 13 years ago the position was grim, but a couple of years later the blockade began. It has been in place for more than 10 years. According to the UN’s July report, in that period GDP has fallen by half; unemployment has reached an extraordinarily high level, with youth unemployment at about 60%, as we have heard; and access to safe drinking water through the public water network has plummeted from 98.3% in 2000 to 10.5% in 2014.

Other hon. Members have referred to the daily blackouts in the electricity supply and the strain on the health service. I will say a bit about that latter point, because I vividly remember meeting families who could not get access to basic healthcare. The World Health Organisation reports that in 2017, the number of permits issued by Israel for Palestinians to leave Gaza to access healthcare reached a record low. The proportion of those who applied who actually got a permit was 54%, the lowest since the World Health Organisation started to keep the figures in 2008. The WHO made the point:

“There has been a continuous decline in approval rates since 2012,”

when 93% were successful. It also reported that in 2017, 54 Palestinians died following the denial of a permit or a delay in issuing a permit. Of those, 46 had cancer. It is very difficult to understand why people who need urgent cancer treatment are being denied permits to leave Gaza to obtain it.

Another problem that people in Gaza have to contend with is a basic lack of calories. In the assessment I referred to earlier about what is going on in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said:

“Until 2010, Israel counted the number of calories that Gaza residents would be allowed to consume, sorted by age and gender, and then used mathematical formulas to restrict the amount of food entering Gaza to no more than what…officials deemed necessary.”

That was defended as

“‘economic warfare’ aimed at weakening Hamas by restricting supplies to residents of Gaza and halting production and trade. It had the opposite effect. Faced with these shortages, the Hamas regime in Gaza consolidated power, handing out food and cash to the poor, hiring the unemployed as public servants, and opening a lucrative trading system via tunnels underneath the border with Egypt.”

We all dearly want to see a two-state solution—a secure Israel alongside an autonomous and independent Palestinian state—but we can all see that time is running out for achieving that solution. I genuinely do not know what the Israeli Government think the long-term solution will be, but the viability of a two-state solution is being continually eroded by the establishment of settlements pepper-potting Palestine. It is increasingly difficult to see how what appears to be the only possible secure and peaceful outcome can be achieved.

I will finish by underlining the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), asked and pressing the Minister on whether the British Government will contribute again to the Occupied Palestinian Territories humanitarian fund. I welcome the fact that we contributed to it last year, and the need for it seems as compelling as ever. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether, as I hope, the British Government will contribute again this year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

Well, I have said what I have said. We will encourage parties to engage, but we did not support the resolution, for the reasons I have given. As I said, the HRC’s relationship with Israel over the years makes it difficult for it to claim to be an independent sponsor. I understand that other nations do not see it that way, but if we want to get to the bottom of this situation, as in any inquiry, we need as much buy-in from as many of the parties as possible. If we know right from the beginning that we will not get that, it will be a false trail in the first place. As the hon. Lady says, there is nothing else there at present. Presumably, that is why the HRC has taken the line that it has taken. We disagree with it, but rather than leave it completely, we want to do exactly as we have indicated.

We have taken this issue directly to the Israeli authorities —that was one of the questions raised—and we will continue to do so. We will wait to see what the response is and what Israel has planned. I would be extremely surprised if Israel did not want to take matters forward in some way, but we will need to make those judgments as they come along. However, just because something imperfect is the only thing in town, that is no reason necessarily to back it if it will not work practically. That is why we have taken the view on the inquiry that we have.

Let me turn to Gaza. The restrictions imposed on movement and access to Gaza contribute significantly to the pressures that the Gazan people face. One of the questions asked by the hon. Member for Hammersmith was about what I thought about the demonstrations. I can only go off what we have—the diplomatic intelligence and everything that we get—and my sense is that it is a combination of those factors that colleagues have brought out. There is an inevitable frustration in Gaza, typified by so many of those comments, but there is a practical and realistic recognition of the politics of the situation and the dreadful combination of what happened last week, together with other events taking place elsewhere.

Colleagues have already spoken of the political incitement that was given during that time. My sense is that it is a terrible mixture of those things, and ultimately the only resolution of that is to take away all the seeds of such frustration. That can be done only with developments in Gaza as a first and urgent step, followed by the political process.

[Stephen Timms]

I appreciate the thoughtful way in which the Minister is answering the debate. I do not think he has yet addressed the question I asked about the United Nations Occupied Palestinian Territories humanitarian fund, which was supported by the British Government last year. Will he give us some hope that the Government will support that fund this year as well?

[Alistair Burt]

As I said to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley, we responded to an appeal in relation to Gaza at the end of last year—I think that was with £1.9 million. We have no current plans to do so, but we are reviewing all our possibilities in support of Gaza. I indicated what we are doing at this moment in relation to the ICRC. Just because nothing is immediately on the table, that does not mean that it will not happen. I will go on to talk about what we hope to do in Gaza and open that up a little.

We note Israel’s recent efforts to ensure the delivery of goods to Gaza, despite the serious damage done at the Kerem Shalom crossing by protestors during recent weeks. We will continue to work hard with Israel for an increase in the entry of goods to Gaza to stimulate economic activity.

The Gazan health sector is of course under immense strain. As I mentioned earlier, medical facilities are already stretched by the long-standing shortages of medical, electricity and fuel supplies. Delays in approvals for medical referrals and difficulty in reaching facilities mean that people have to wait a long time for medical treatment. Do we make representations on that? Yes, we do. Like other colleagues here, I find it difficult to see how cancer patients can be any risk to those looking after border controls and the like. We do indeed make representations where we can on that. While we always recognise that there are those who will seek to exploit anything, we would want to see the discretion that we would expect, which is used by Israel in a number of cases, extended to all those genuine medical cases.

The tragic events during the recent protests at the Gaza border have exacerbated the chronic strain on the health system. Emergency services are overwhelmed and overstretched, and the WHO is calling for essential drugs, medical disposables and medical kits for surgery and trauma. The ICRC recently stated that the health system is close to collapse, which is why we are in urgent consultation with it at this moment.

We welcome the decision by the Palestinian Authority to provide critical medical supplies and doctors to Gaza. There is also a desperate ongoing need for access to clean water. As I mentioned earlier, the UK is supporting approximately 1 million Gazans through support to UNICEF’s work to provide clean water and rehabilitate sanitation facilities, helping to stop the spread of disease.

We are also a long-term supporter of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, which provides basic health and education services to 1.3 million people in Gaza, as well as over 800,000 refugees in the west bank. The United States is responsible for its own policy, but the UK will deliver its next round of financial support earlier than originally planned to help meet the growing needs of Palestinian refugees across the region. We remain keen to support UNRWA in its work. We are one of the top five UNRWA donors, and we remain keen to ensure that all donor partners recognise the part it plays, and to help and assist in dealing with any queries or concerns that others may have.

News of Egypt opening the Rafah crossing for Ramadan is encouraging, and we urge Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to work together to find a resolution to the situation in Gaza. The UK will continue to work with the UN special representative of the Secretary-General to facilitate that.

In connection with that, Nikolai Mladenov, the special representative, presented to the UN Security Council yesterday and addressed the situation in Gaza. He brought forward commitments, including on the need to advance urgent infrastructure and economic development projects, to improve access and movement, and to support the Egyptian-led reconciliation process. In particular, he spoke about his aim to fast-track the delivery of priority projects agreed over the past two years by the ad hoc liaison committee, such as the Gaza central desalination programme, the implementation of the Red sea-Dead sea agreement to provide clean water to Gaza, support on sewage treatment, and the 161 line for better electricity supply. As he noted, failure to implement during the next six to 12 months some of the achievable projects already approved by the relevant stakeholders would amplify the humanitarian crisis.

We stand ready to support the areas of work that Mr Mladenov and the UN have identified. We also support him in an engagement and co-ordination role, working with the Palestinian Authority, Israel and Egypt to overcome any political, administrative and logistical blockages that may emerge. That work will help to improve the humanitarian situation, stimulate economic activity and ensure a long-term future for Gaza.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) asked about the Quartet proposals. I met John Clarke, the economic director of the Quartet, about two weeks ago, when we discussed some of the ongoing work, and I indicated the United Kingdom’s support. We are planning to upscale our support for the economic development of Gaza in order to increase trade and job creation, enable greater movement and access for people and goods, and enhance the supply of electricity and water.