International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, and to be back in Westminster Hall after it was closed for so long. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on securing a debate on this important issue.

Like the hon. Member, I welcome progress in the US Congress towards establishing a new international fund for projects to promote peace and reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians. It makes sense in this context to reflect on some of the experiences in Northern Ireland, albeit that is a very different situation to the one that prevails in the middle east.

As Northern Ireland Secretary, I saw for myself the incredibly important role played by grassroots community projects aimed at bringing people together across historic and long-lasting divides. I saw how they helped to embed the peace settlement resulting from the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. Looking back in history, it is clear that they played a role in securing that agreement.

Over the years, we have seen groups such as the WAVE Trauma Centre, Healing Through Remembering, the Corrymeela Community and the Fitzroy-Clonard Fellowship. Such organisations cannot on their own resolve deep-seated conflicts—that requires political leadership from all sides. We have seen that from Israel, but sadly lacking from the Palestinian side. Grassroots groups of this nature, promoting peaceful co-existence, can be part of the momentum for peace and help to create the conditions in which political leaders feel confident to come together and find common ground and compromise.

Those Northern Ireland projects received support from many sources, including successive UK Governments, but also from the International Fund for Ireland, which has clearly provided inspiration for the ideas we are considering today. I certainly encourage the Foreign Office to deploy part of its aid budget to this new US-inspired international initiative on promoting projects aimed at securing peaceful co-existence between Israel and the Palestinians.

It is crucial that all funding, whether for this programme or others operating in the middle east, goes to worthwhile projects that are genuinely trying to bring people together. It is a concern for me and a number of my constituents that some UK charities and NGOs take a highly politicised and partisan approach to the middle east. For example, I have raised concerns about some of the activities in the past of War On Want with the Charities Commission. I hope those running any new fund will learn lessons from the problems that have beset existing aid programmes operating in the West Bank.

Just over 16 years ago, in my former role as an MEP, I first raised concerns about the abuse of aid money given to the Palestinian Authority. Those were the days of the flagrant misappropriation of cash by Yasser Arafat and his cronies—problems that, I am afraid, continue to some degree to this day.

I appreciate that successive Conservative Secretaries of State have tried to clean up the system. Those efforts were well intentioned and made a real difference. There are now far more effective controls to save taxpayers’ money than there were in the past. The issue remains, however, that the UK makes substantial contributions to UNRWA, which distributes aid on the basis of perceived entitlement rather than humanitarian need and whose definition of “refugee” as passing down generations perpetuates division rather than bringing people together.

I accept that UK aid money, thankfully, does not fund extremist or antisemitic curriculum content, but it does pay the salaries of teachers who use such materials. Thankfully, UK aid does not fund the appalling salaries paid to terrorists, but salaries were increased dependent on the number of Israelis killed. I am worried that while, thankfully, our taxpayers’ money does not go directly to fund these salaries, it indirectly enables such payments by the PLO by releasing money that otherwise would have to be deployed to cover the costs of the salaries of public sector workers that are currently met by the United Kingdom taxpayer.

Whether it is a new international fund for peace between Israel and the Palestinians or the UK’s existing programmes to support the Palestinian Authority, I urge the Minister to ensure that taxpayers’ money is always rigorously scrutinised and spent only on projects to bring people together rather than push them apart and on projects working for peace and not perpetuating conflict.

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[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

It is good to see you in the Chair once more, Mr Efford.

I thank my hon. Friend for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for securing the debate and for an excellent speech. Like others, I believe that an international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace would aim to help any future peace process by promoting co-operation, dialogue, joint economic development and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. As the chair of Labour Friends of Israel, I am delighted that we are able to have this debate today; this is something we have argued for for some time.

It is important that the concept of an international fund, as we have heard, has been designed by the Alliance for Middle East Peace, because it is an independent organisation with extensive experience in this area. Therefore, I think some of the concerns raised by the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) about other group initiatives would not apply here, because ALLMEP has an almost impeccable record in this field.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), I am pleased that the UK became the first country to endorse the concept of an international fund when, in 2017, it introduced the People for Peaceful Change project after lobbying from LFI and others.

[Theresa Villiers]

There have been several mentions of LFI, and I welcome the work that has been done on promoting the idea of funding peaceful co-existence projects. However, does the hon. Gentleman not find it sad that the leading MP who championed this idea, Joan Ryan, then MP for Enfield North, felt so intimidated and bullied by people in the Labour party, especially on the antisemitism issue, that she actually had to leave the party? We cannot ignore that significant problem within the hon. Gentleman’s party when referring to the LFI.

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for that, because it is probably as well to clear this issue up once and for all. LFI battled through the whole of the crisis of antisemitism in the Labour party, and I certainly do not want to in any sense pretend that it did not happen or that it was not a dark stain on our history. What I would say about my former colleague Joan Ryan is that I am immensely grateful to her for the work she did during that period. I hope that the changes that Labour is experiencing under a new leadership will herald the day when someone like Joan will feel perfectly comfortable sitting alongside me once more.

While I welcome that UK Government programme, it is important to acknowledge that, astonishingly enough, the UK Government had spent nothing on supporting co-existence projects prior to that programme. The US bipartisan and bicameral proposals, the middle east partnership for peace, is now making real progress. It aims not just to grow economic development, but to tackle the incitement and dehumanisation that has plagued both sides of this conflict. The legislation establishes a fund to improve economic co-operation and people-to-people exchanges. I think that is how we breathe life into the two-state solution. ALLMEP should be congratulated on its success in building an enormous, unprecedented coalition of support, making the fund one of the only bipartisan Israel-Palestine priorities in Congress.

In February 2018, the then Middle East Minister Alistair Burt announced the UK’s support for the concept of an international fund. However, since then the Government have failed to follow up on their warm words. The Biden Administration now present a huge opportunity for the UK to seize this moment and play a crucial part in this multilateral initiative. Our experience in development finance and in Northern Ireland means that we are ideally placed. We have heard about how we could claim one of the two international seats and use our experience to good effect.

This September, in response to a parliamentary question about plans to allocate funding to support the US fund, the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa said:

“We welcome efforts towards peace…We will continue to monitor the People-to-People Partnership for Peace Fund”—

as it was then known—

“as it progresses through the US legislative system.”

It is making great progress. Let us act now, to show that we are determined to get involved. Without funding from Governments and private philanthropy, co-existence projects can have only a limited impact but, operating at scale and properly funded, they can build powerful constituencies for peace, forcing politicians to return to meaningful negotiations.

As we heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North and for St Helens North, Northern Ireland has shown that this work can provide vital underpinnings for any future agreement. That civil society dimension of peacebuilding is about practical politics, building and embedding public support for any future agreement and ensuring that it can weather the challenges ahead. Just as we found in Northern Ireland, broad-based popular support is a prerequisite for any successful peace process.

The International Fund for Ireland spent about 8% more per head daily than is currently available for grassroots co-existence work in Israel and Palestine. Over the two decades since the signing of the Oslo accords, a growing network of NGOs has worked at grassroots level to foster values of co-existence, peace and reconciliation. The international fund would bring together public and private donors, nations, corporations and private foundations and individuals. It would focus work on supporting joint initiatives and co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians and between Arabs and Jews. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North said, it would lead to empowerment, civic activism and a host of other activities. It is envisaged that that $200 million per year fund would receive contributions from the international community, including the Arab world, but importantly it would be independently managed and additional to any existing support already provided directly to either the Palestinian Authority or Israel.

This work is more critical than ever because, as elsewhere in the world, Israel is suffering the economic as well as health consequences of the pandemic. It is about to enter its first recession in more than two decades. The economic crisis in the west bank is even deeper, as it was already in recession. The Palestinian economy has shrunk by an estimated 7.6% during the pandemic, pushing an existing recession into a deep depression. This raises the prospect of increased tensions, which suits those who have no investment in building for peace.

The peacebuilding sector provides essential services to many communities, but it is dependent on global donors and support from foreign Governments. We must develop greater co-ordination among major funders so that donor states improve their efforts with regard to civil society. Increased co-ordination will lead to a more efficient and effective use of resources, as well as opportunities for cross-pollination and deeper partnerships. That is why this international fund is so important and why this country must play a leading role.

As we have heard, there is a growing body of evidence showing the benefits of co-existence projects, even though most of this work has been achieved in the face of considerable challenges, most notably the collapse of the peace process and the second intifada.

Four years ago, Labour Friends of Israel was proud to launch its campaign “For Israel, For Palestine, For Peace” in pursuit of the very international fund that is now within our grasp. I acknowledge the important intervention of the British Government with the people for peaceful change fund, but I urge the Minister to build on that today by confirming that we will play a leading role in supporting this international fund.

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[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on securing the debate and on giving such a clear exposition of her case.

We have had a very good debate this afternoon. It is also important to stress that the debate has not only been good but it has been conducted in the right kind of spirit. That is so important when we talk about the emotive issue of Israel and Palestine. We need to have mutual respect among ourselves and understand that it is a complex issue that requires sensitivity and understanding.

One thing that unites most people in this House—certainly in this Chamber—is that we believe in the two-state solution. That is the only way to bring real peace to Israel and Palestine. We need to recognise that a safe Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state can be achieved only through negotiation, and for that negotiation to be successful, there inevitably has to be give and take. It also has to be recognised that it is important to pay attention to the climate in which those negotiations can take place and their overall context.

That is why this debate is so important. It is vital to have co-operation between the Israelis and Palestinians in a daily, practical sense. It is important that they understand where each other is coming from. It is important that they respect each other and that there is reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

It is important to recognise, as a number of Members have said this afternoon, that we have a great deal to learn from the experience of Northern Ireland. That was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) and the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers). The contribution this afternoon from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was particularly moving, because he accurately talked about two traditions in Northern Ireland: the nationalist tradition and the Unionist tradition, historically a long way apart from each other with different histories. What is significant about the 1980s and 1990s is that people began to talk and to understand where each was coming from. Eventually common ground was found, and, hopefully, a secure way has been mapped out to have lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

I remember well the mid-1980s and the 1990s and the troubles. I was a Member of the European Parliament at the time and I remember talking to my good friend John Hume. John passionately believed in the need for a well funded international fund for Ireland. Through negotiation with others, he was able to establish that fund, which made a huge contribution towards bringing people together and establishing through civic society the very firm foundations for a Good Friday agreement. That fund in Northern Ireland—the international fund for Ireland, as it was called—brought many people together, not just in Northern Ireland but from the southern part, too. It was the great unsung hero of the peace process.

From all of that, we have so much to learn. I believe that the fund we have been talking about this afternoon, in the context of Israel and Palestine, offers the way to take forward many of the principles underpinning that fund in Northern Ireland. We have heard about the international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace, and hon. Members have accurately described the process in America, whereby the House of Representatives has approved legislation that is now progressing through the Senate. Significantly, the legislation has bipartisan support. It is not just Republicans or Democrats; people drawn from both parties in the United States are supporting the initiative. I, like other hon. Members, am hopeful that when the new Biden-Harris Administration takes office in January, it will take up the idea and make it a reality.

The fund is important because eventually it will become an institution—one that will have helped lay the bedrock for the peace process. However, it will not simply be an abstract institution. It will also be a fund that will encourage practical initiatives that bring people together. It will encourage entrepreneurship and—who knows?—it might even help the establishment of joint schools for the children of Israelis and Palestinians. It will provide spaces for people to talk about their common problems.

[Theresa Villiers]

The hon. Gentleman is very gracious in giving way. There is much that I agree with in his speech, but there is—sorry to use a cliché—an elephant in the room. He is a member of a party from which advocates for Israel such as Ian Austin and Ivan Lewis resigned their membership because saying anything in defence of Israel within the Labour party—a political party that they had supported for their entire adult life—was howled down and met with intimidation and antisemitism.

[Wayne David]

With all due respect, we are not talking about the internal politics of the Labour party here today. Frankly, we are talking about something far more important than that: we are talking about peace being established between the people of Israel and Palestinians. That is the important thing. That is not to underestimate what has been said about antisemitism inside the Labour party, but there is a time and place for everything. Today, we are talking about peace in the middle east and peace between the people of Israel and Palestine.

I believe that the fund, if it is established by the United States of America and others rally behind and support it, will be a huge step forward. However, I must say too that it is not an alternative to UNRWA funding but is something that must be introduced as well as that. It is not an excuse, as some people have suggested, for supporting settlements on the west bank. It is important to recognise that the fund is something quite different and it requires cross-party support from all good people who support peace in the middle east, coming together to find common ground.

I pay tribute, as a number of hon. Members have already done, to the Alliance for Middle East Peace. ALLMEP has being plugging away for a long time on this. At last, we are seeing real fruition coming about today and there is tremendous optimism. I must say that a lot of optimism is required from time to time in the middle east, but I believe the fund really offers that. All tribute to the alliance for championing that so consistently.

We are talking about the United States, but I emphasise that the fund must not be for the United States alone; we require multilateral international support. The Europeans have given support and the British can give support as well. It is vital that we do. There is a huge opportunity for the Prime Minister, when he talks about global Britain, to be proactive and to give the lead even to the Americans to encourage them to move forward quickly. I hope the British Government will be unambiguous and emphatic in supporting the fund as quickly as possible, but I want them to go further. I do not want only rhetoric from the Government; we are used to plenty of that. I want them to come forward and say that they want one of the two seats that will govern the fund when it is established. I also want them not only to say that will they support the Abraham accords that have been established between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, but to go further and say that the fund must be used for Arab support for such an initiative. That would be a huge step forward.

Finally, we all need to recognise that the fund will potentially make a huge contribution to peace. A lasting peace has to be seen as a process and not a single event.