Israel/Gaza

Lord Mendelsohn Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my register of interests. I am a director of the UK Abraham Accords Group, I am involved on the boards of companies which have staff and premises in Israel, and I am a board member of a cancer charity and many other organisations.

It is impossible not to describe what has been going on as just simply heartbreaking. I thank the Minister for his absolutely outstanding speech, for the resolve and clarity that he shows and that the Government have shown, for their work in the region and for their full engagement. This is all deeply important. I thank the leader of my party for his clarity and the Front Bench for demonstrating it as well. I am truly humbled to be in this Chamber when we have had such an important and constructive debate with so many significant and thoughtful contributions. I join my voice with those calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages as quickly as possible.

I was in Israel when the rockets started hitting and when the land incursion took place. In fact, I was woken up by my phone which I had set to one of the alerts which tell you if rockets come over. I had it on silent, but it just did not stop vibrating. It woke me at 7 am; my wife had been up since 6.30 am. It was immediately apparently that this was something very, very different. The reason I mention this is that I have kept it vibrating still every day. Every single day I get a reminder of the condition of rockets being fired into Israel and the murderous intent to kill as many people as possible, which has been stopped only by some advanced technology. These happen constantly, and it was almost prescient that just before we started this debate, the most enormous amount of rockets were fired on Israel, including one in an area that I was staying in when I was there on Saturday, which would have given me 90 seconds to get to a bomb shelter.

That issue is still constant. It is also the case that this afternoon, like every day for at least the last 10 days, there have been major incursions with rockets and other things from the northern border. One should not forget the precarious situation and the threats that Israel faces in general, including the attack from Yemen. This is more than just the issue of Gaza. This is what Hamas has wrought: a major form of instability.

I will just reference one other thing, which is that I have always wanted to be involved in the pursuit of peace. I have made much of my time, resources and other things available to the disposal of any initiative that tries to work towards peace, like many in this House. I have never been anything more than a minor supporter in that role. I cannot profess to any particularly significant achievement or role, but I was certainly involved in trying to do as much as we could with the Gaza withdrawal. When it was first mooted in 2004, it was supported widely and overwhelmingly in Israel, especially after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004. There were initiatives here. In fact, we had an Israeli and Palestinian initiative, supported by the Government here, that helped to build some of the conditions to make that work. I worked with a number of people in the wider community on trying to make sure that, when Israel withdrew, there was significant building. The Emirati companies were very keen to invest in that. One of those that did go over to invest a huge amount was chased out of Gaza. We have led to this terrible succession of things that we all know of so well, leading to Hamas’s takeover in 2007, which of course came after the abduction of Gilad Shalit. One should remember that Hamas has always been trying to undermine that situation.

So where have we ended up with that deep desire to create peace? It has trapped Israel in military strikes, economic pressures and isolation as the only strategy to try and deal with Gaza. Gaza has not had the economic success or benefits linked to peace, nor the security that it would have wished for. We have ended up in a situation which is far worse. For those of us who always try the march towards peace, the steps back that can be taken are very severe, and we must consider that. Of course, there is no accident, in my view, in the timing of why these events took place. It was because we were making more progress than we have ever done in last few years on the diplomatic side with the Saudi initiative.

We must address the inescapable point that, for as long as Hamas remains a force, the cause of peace will be the profound casualty. Hamas in Gaza is like having ISIS on your border. It has had a destructive legacy on peace from Oslo: suicide bombers, child soldiers—it does not matter what it is, Hamas has always been the great underminer. Our core mistake has been to believe that a Hamas presence is possible and consistent with any peace initiative. It is not. We must address it. We must address the malign influence of Iran which has emboldened them all. We must urge the regional actors who are part of the solution to do more, and for Qatar to do more to try and put pressure, not just on the hostage situation, but for Hamas to be more engaged.

The central unarguable point is that Hamas is the problem, and everyone has to choose which side they are on: peace or conflict. People must understand that Hamas is not the Palestinians. Those who argue in the media, at demonstrations or elsewhere, who provide succour or support for Hamas, its methods or policies, who justify or explain away its actions or even recite or chant the politics and phrases from its hateful charter do nothing for peace. I fear the reality is we have to accept that when we talk about a horizon for peace, after the war, or commitments to two states, all of which I profoundly agree with, it is unlikely to be feasible unless Hamas can be reduced to the husk that ISIS is. We need the right coalition of willing partners to make that happen.