Israel and Palestine

Lord Harries of Pentregarth Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking, with international partners, to calm the violence and build a lasting peace between the government of Israel and the Palestinian people.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, in 1962 I had the great privilege of spending a term studying in Jerusalem. Signs of conflict were everywhere; there was barbed wire across the streets and pockmarks in the walls made by bullets from recent fighting. The time was tense and difficult. But now, more than 60 years later, the situation is even worse—the tension greater, the violence more bitter. Some of us will remember that the two great political issues in 1962 were the Cold War and apartheid. We could see no end to the Cold War, but in 1989 the Berlin Wall was torn down. We did not expect apartheid to come to an end without massive bloodshed, but in 1994 Nelson Mandela was elected peacefully president of South Africa. Is it not a terrible indictment of leadership on all sides and the whole international community that still nothing very much has happened, and that the situation is in fact much worse now than it was in 1962? The hopes of Oslo in 1993 and the hopes of so many since then have come to absolutely nothing.

It is understandable that the eyes of the world have been elsewhere this year—on Ukraine, the women of Afghanistan and Iran, and the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey—but during this time tension in Israel has risen and violence has increased. In January, a Palestinian boy throwing stones in the West Bank was killed. Then in a raid by security forces, nine Palestinians were killed in Jenin. On the same day, a 13 year-old boy shot seven Israelis outside a synagogue in east Jerusalem. The following day, rockets were fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip and there was a further exchange of fire. A few days later, there was a major raid in Nablus, in which 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 injured. A few days after that, a Palestinian killed two Israeli settlers. This was followed by settlers running amok, torching homes and cars, with the IDF apparently unwilling or unable to stop it. Once again, families are left bereaved, young Palestinians are left even more desperate, and more Israeli peace-lovers are left in despair at the present Government.

After that outbreak of violence, Israeli and Palestinian delegates made a joint commitment to take immediate steps to end it. This followed talks in Aqaba between the parties, alongside the United States and Egyptian officials. The announcement said that Palestinian and Israeli sides

“affirmed their commitment to all previous agreements between them, and to work towards just and lasting peace”.

Both sides also committed to immediately working to end unilateral measures for a period of three to six months, which included an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months and to stop the authorisation of any outposts for six months. The parties agreed to reconvene in Egypt in March this year—this month—to determine progress made towards these goals. However, this statement was immediately called into question by some members of the Israeli Government, including Mr Netanyahu himself, who denied that there would be a settlement freeze or any kind of pause.

My first question for the Minister is: what role are our own Government playing in this process? Is he in a position to clarify what has been agreed and what progress, if any, has been made with a view to the reconvened meeting later this month?

The reason I asked for this debate is not just the recent level of violence, severe though it has been, but because there will continue to be violence unless there is hope. At the moment, there is no hope. Where is the hope in the situation? What sign of hope can be given to young Palestinians, or to those Israelis who have lost their family or friends and who have sincerely wanted and worked for a solution? Studies of those who survived harsh imprisonment during World War Two showed that the people most likely to survive were those who had something to live for—for example, a hope of seeing a loved one again. Without hope, people become desperate. Since Oslo in 1993, the hope has been held out of a two-state solution. Recently, our Government have once again committed themselves to that solution, as have various other international bodies, the UN and the EU. However, at the same time, I have read—as I am sure your Lordships have—commentators saying that the two-state solution is dead and that nothing will now revive the peace process. Is it really dead? If it is, what hope can be given?

The idea of a single state, once dismissed by most people, has surfaced again. Is this a serious idea—a single state with equality for all its citizens? In a recent article, Jonathan Freedland, while not arguing for this, nevertheless pointed out that overall turnout in the November election topped 70% but among Israeli Arabs it was just 53.2%. He argued that if Arabs had voted in the same numbers as Jews, Netanyahu would not be Prime Minister. He suggested that to remedy this will require,

“first, a wholesale change in mindset on the part of the mainstream Israeli left, one that at last listens to Palestinian demands for equality inside the green line and an end to occupation beyond it. That could, in turn, prompt a sea change among Palestinian-Israelis, a recognition that a de facto boycott of Israel’s political institutions might have made sense when a separate Palestinian state seemed on the horizon, but makes no sense now. It only strengthens those bent on making their lives worse.”

I am, of course, aware of the arguments on this issue, but I will not enter into them now. My point is about the total lack of hope in anything at the moment. I believe it would be quite wrong simply for the international community to shrug its shoulders and assume that nothing can be done. While the recent meeting in Jordan to see what might be done in the immediate term to reduce the level of violence is to be welcomed, it is not enough.

I recently asked a friend living in Jerusalem if he could find any hope in the present situation. He wrote that he looked to the individuals committed to peace and reconciliation, “the mother of an Israeli soldier killed at a checkpoint in the Second Intifada joining a group of bereaved from both sides of conflict and becoming best friends with a Palestinian man whose daughter was killed at a checkpoint by an Israeli soldier, or the man at the Tent of Nations who is in the longest-running legal dispute to keep the family olive farm despite beatings, intimidation and Kafkaesque legal dealings”. His mantra was: “We refuse to be enemies”. These are people who belong to the Parents Circle-Families Forum—PCFF—a body that I have long admired. This group is made up of parents, Jewish and Palestinian, who have all lost family members in the conflict. However, apparently even the PCFF is being threatened with tough new restrictions on its activities by Israel’s recently elected coalition Government. They are planning to curtail the organisation’s access to high schools where, for years, bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families have been allowed to meet groups of teenagers before they are called up for any service. If this is the case, I hope that our own Government will vigorously protest.

So, in the name of those Israeli and Palestinian parents, we cannot allow the present situation to continue fluctuating between simmering violence and its inevitable explosion forever. Meanwhile, as we are all aware, we have to face the fact that, as settlements continue to grow in number and size, the viability of a Palestinian state gets more and more called into question; the Palestinian position, already weak, becomes even weaker; and young people on both sides become even more desperate.

Let us have some honesty in the international community. Is the two-state solution dead? If not, let us have some real initiatives for reviving it. In 1978, that good man President Carter, who is now in his last days in a hospice, called together Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat to agree a framework for peace in the Middle East. Where is the Jimmy Carter for our time? We cannot simply shrug and resign ourselves to the fact that this will go on forever. A new initiative is needed. I beg to move.