UK Policy on the Middle East

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I was going to say something very different when I started listening to the debate, but after hearing the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) talk about different countries’ rules, regulations and societies, I must say that that is no basis for invading, for killing or for destroying other people. One cannot say, “I’m a friend of Israel because it is a democracy.” We can be friends with Israel; I have no problem with the state of Israel. I welcome what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) said about the way to deal with the situation in the middle east. He said that the Palestinian people should receive land in proportion to their population. There should be an end to illegal settlements, and we should end the war, which has created so much misery for the Palestinian people.

We have to go back in history. In the 19th century, only 5% of the population in Palestine were Jewish; 95% were Muslims and Christians. In 1931, 18% of the people in Palestine were Jewish, resulting from the persecution of the Jewish people in Europe. Between 1947 and 1948, 78% of Palestinians were expelled from their homeland, and now Jewish people hold 75% of the land, whereas the Palestinians, who are larger in number, have only 25%. That is the dispute under discussion; that is the issue that the House must not forget. People have been expelled from their homes and blockaded, but some Members say, “We can’t see why people are being critical of the Israelis and why people feel that they should fight for the rights of the Palestinians.” I agree that there should be two states, but they should be created on the basis of equality—on the basis that 20% of the population own 75% of the land. When does that become fair? When is that right? Until we put those wrongs right, we will never have peace in Palestine.

I am surprised that people seem to have forgotten the history. Jewish people were massacred and genocide was committed against them, but it was carried out by western democratic countries—Germany, Austria and Poland; nobody in the middle east carried out genocide against the Jewish people. If the Palestinians are given their proper rights, I do not think that the state of Israel will have any problem with any of its neighbours. It would certainly finish Hamas, because Hamas exists only because such inequities exist. If we gave the Palestinian people their rightful homeland, if we gave them a proper share of the land and if we gave them security, Hamas would disappear just like that.