Israel and Palestine

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Ed Miliband

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement.

As we meet today, let me start with what we agree on. We agree that illegal settlements are wrong. We all agree that groups of settlers have been guilty of outrageous abuses of ordinary Palestinians and crimes against innocent civilians. We agree that some Israeli Ministers have indulged in hateful propaganda and incitement. We agree that the current path is leading Israelis and Palestinians towards a darker, more dangerous future. We agree that Hamas’s terrorist atrocity of 7 October left many Jews in Israel and around the world afraid and vulnerable. We agree that the suffering in Gaza is horrific. But we also agree that those who praise Hamas and other terror groups or see them as legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people are wrong, that payments to those who are killed while attacking Israeli civilians are wrong, and that those who call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state and the murder of its citizens with cries of, “From the river to the sea,” are wrong. Ignoring the victims on all sides and putting at risk the viability of the two-state solution is wrong.

This is not about Israel alone, and it certainly is not about reducing the complexity of the region to a single sentence. Sadly, the Government are in the process of doing just that. When they recognised the state of Palestine, only recently, they did so against the laws we ourselves have defended since 1933, in contravention of the Montevideo convention and of the principles we have set out. When they sanctioned Israeli Ministers, they failed to make the case to many others, including the European Union, and today they are enacting a policy that the Foreign Office knows will not work.

The Government also know that this policy will harm innocents. Just 13 weeks ago, two Ministers of this Government—the right hon. Members for Lincoln (Mr Falconer) and for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant)—wrote to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), rejecting this very policy as the economies of Palestine and Israel are too interconnected—innocent Palestinians and Israelis will suffer. Still this Government are pressing on in haste, despite warnings from the Labour Benches from the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) and from the Government’s own reviewer of terrorism legislation that turning Israel into a pariah risks sectarian division in our own country and a further rise in antisemitic violence on our streets.

As the Foreign Secretary knows, others are waiting. The Israeli election is in just seven weeks, and many have correctly argued that this action will help the extreme candidates’ campaigns, not those who are making the moderate argument for a united Israel. In the week before Rosh Hashanah and the high holy days, the Government are acting without prudence, introducing sanctions that are both light and serious. They are light because they will not actually target settlers—as the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations has said—but will be stretched to include all Israeli and Palestinian businesses, leaving many without opportunity, including those who make the pharmaceuticals that keep many British patients alive. They are serious because they risk what the Foreign Secretary has himself condemned: encouraging sectarianism and antisemitism at home, and discouraging co-operation abroad.

As such, I have six questions for the Foreign Secretary. First, on the coherence of the policy, can he confirm that the advice from his Department on the practicality of sanctions has changed so dramatically that these sanctions will in reality be targeted, not area as previously stated? Secondly, what conversations has he had with wider partners and allies to co-ordinate a full international action that might actually work, and why will he not wait for the result? Thirdly, what assessment has he made of the impact on domestic security and community cohesion in the United Kingdom, barely a year since the first antisemitic murder in our country in generations? Fourthly, what assessment has he made of the impact on our security partnerships with both Israel and the United States, which have kept Iranian regime-backed murderers off our streets for the past few years? Fifthly, what instructions has he given to the enforcement bodies to ensure that Parkinson’s, myeloma and multiple sclerosis patients will still get the drugs that keep them alive? Finally, will he let us know now what instructions he has given to the Foreign Office for the accreditation of diplomats to the Palestinian embassy should Hamas win the elections in November and send their own envoys here under diplomatic immunity?

We have seen growing antisemitism in the United Kingdom, and we have seen increasing violence against Jewish targets. The Conservative party will always reject the hate-filled sectarianism that we have seen on our streets. We can—and where appropriate, should—criticise the Israeli Government, and still defend the right of the Jewish people to a home. I place on record my and my party’s deep sadness at the violence we have seen in recent months and years, our commitment to the right of Palestinians and Israelis to live in dignity and peace, and our recognition of those who have been victims over generations. None of us here rejects the Government’s stated aim that we must do everything we can to end the cycle of violence, and we welcome the sanctions against Al-Qard Al-Hassan and the condemnation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. However, I am sorry to say that this Government are wrong. As the Foreign Office has previously stated, this policy will damage the interests of innocent Palestinians, Israelis who condemn settlements, and the British people. What we reject is not the intent, but the performative politics and acting without wide support that leaves our envoys weaker and their voices irrelevant. We know, from our own history, that we do not make peace from just one side, and nor do we make it alone.

[Ed Miliband]

I thank the shadow Foreign Secretary for his response. It is our first time opposite each other at the Dispatch Box, so let me congratulate him on his appointment—he has a proud record in Parliament as Security Minister and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and brings great expertise to this House. However, I profoundly disagree with his conclusions. At the beginning of his speech, he mentioned a number of things that we agree on, and it is important to highlight those. I will answer his specific questions in a moment, but the underlying problem of his position is this. He supports the two-state solution with great vigour; he believes in the two-state solution; he sees the two-state solution being destroyed before our eyes; and I am afraid his prescription is to do nothing about it. There is a choice that we face in this. Do we stand by? Are we bystanders to the end of a long-established Government policy, and indeed the only hope for security and stability in the middle east, or do we act? We have chosen to act, and I think that the country—most of the country—will be with us, because we cannot simply stand by.

Let me now deal with the points made by the right hon. Gentleman. I say this with the greatest respect to him, but the voices that I listen to more than his on the Palestinian people are those of the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and Palestine’s ambassador to the UK. Both of them have been urging us to act, and have been urging us to act for a long time. I think that this is a profound point: their voices are incredibly important in this debate.

I utterly reject the idea that we want to make Israel a pariah state. I could not have been clearer in my statement about our friendship with the Israeli people, and indeed our wish to have trade with Green Line Israel, but, in a sense, we have to take a view about the occupation. If the occupation is illegal, do we want to maintain, at the level of principle, normal economic relationships? We say no. The right hon. Gentleman apparently says yes, which I think is a mistake.

Is this a coherent policy? Absolutely. As I said, it will take six to nine months to come into place, and we will have discussions with Members of the House and others, but it is a SAMLA—Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018—based sanctions regime. There are sanctions regimes involving a number of other countries. Will it be geographic? It will be in relation to the import ban. It will be focused on the settlements in the occupied territories, and we will absolutely ensure that it does not hit green-line Israel.

The right hon. Gentleman says that we should act with others. We have assembled a very wide international coalition precisely to act with others. As for community cohesion, it is incredibly important, but the point—the absolute core—is that surely we must all accept what I said in my statement. We can disagree with the Government of Israel. We can take action with the Government of Israel, and at the same time be absolutely steadfast in protecting Jews across Britain and across the world. We cannot let these debates be confused. I am confident about our intelligence and security partnerships, which I talked about in my statement. The right hon. Gentleman also asked about medical supplies, and so on; they will absolutely be protected.

Let me finally say—to all Members—that one fact that has been most apparent to me in my seven weeks or so in this job is that Britain is a highly respected partner across the world. Britain has influence. Britain has reach. We cannot take the view of Britain that we are powerless in the face of injustice, and today we say that we are not powerless; we can act.

National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Ed Miliband

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point that the United States has exactly the regime that I am talking about and does indeed have those wide powers of intervention, so the notion that people are going to set up in the United States rather than Britain, when they have much stronger powers than us, does not hold water.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is of course right that there is a difference between the United States and the United Kingdom. One of the differences is that there are 350 million people in the United States. It is a continental power, a position that the UK sadly does not share. It does mean that our investment regime and our investment protocols have to recognise that we are having foreign direct investment of a very different nature.

I appreciate that this is a matter for debate, and I also appreciate that this is something where we will probably not agree. In fact, interestingly, the right hon. Gentleman seems to align much more closely with the former Prime Minister’s special adviser Mr Dominic Cummings than he does with me. Apart from that, it is actually a matter for a separate Bill. I may actually have some views where I sympathise more with him, but this Bill is quite clearly about national security. There are issues about how much further it should go, but what he says is not the scope of this Bill.

[Edward Miliband]

I can say to the hon. Gentleman that this is the first time I have been called a Cummings-ite. I have been called many things in my time, but a Cummings-ite after Cummings is really unusual.

The final point I will make before I conclude, because many hon. and right hon. Members want to speak in this debate, is that when I listen to Government Members, I feel that they accept the logic that we have to move away from the old view—the two decades ago view best embodied perhaps by the Enterprise Act 2002—when it comes to national security. They say, “We are worried about the investment effects, but national security matters.” Of course it does, and I agree with that. But then, when it comes to our industrial base, suddenly they have a completely different view, which is, “No, no, no. We can’t go back. We can’t change our view.” I think there is a degree, dare I say it, of inconsistency on that.