Palestine

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is making a powerful case on such an important subject, about which we all feel so passionately. Does he agree that our Government have a duty to behave responsibly on arms licences? I asked the Secretary of State for Defence about that last week and found that 68 licences were granted in the six months leading up to the summer before the crisis in Gaza. That is £7 million-worth of arms, which surely does not fit with our principle of responsible exports.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. I encourage Members, whether they have been in the House for four years or 40 years, to keep interventions short—more than 30 Members want to speak, and I will announce the time limit in a moment—and to ensure that all mobile phones are switched to silent.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Thank you, Mr Pritchard.

I am grateful for the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth, because I was going to refer to her question. I have some suggestions for how we might move things forward. All parties in this House agree that the two-state solution is the way forward, and it has been the stated foreign policy objective of successive Governments for decades, but there has been a gap in the rhetoric of Ministers—this is not a criticism of the current incumbent, because I know he is a man of good faith who is seeking a solution.

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[Grahame M. Morris]

I will not, if my hon. Friend does not mind, as I have been generous in giving way. A lot of Members have indicated that they want to speak, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will have his opportunity.

To respond to the specific point about trade, I point out—[Interruption.] Well, in terms of economic pressure—[Interruption.]

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. If there are to be interventions, they must be made in the normal way so that they can be recorded in Hansard and picked up by the media.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Thank you, Mr Pritchard. On applying pressure to move things towards a negotiated settlement, trade is rather asymmetrical and there are strong arguments to support it as a legitimate tactic for bringing about negotiations, because the obstacle seems to be that the Israelis achieve their ends through the status quo and have no interest in pursuing a peaceful solution.

There was a tremendous outpouring of emotion from the British public this summer. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protest, not just in London, where there were huge demonstrations with more than 100,000 people, and where 50,000 protested outside the Israeli embassy, but all across the great cities of the north, in my region, and in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as in smaller towns and villages. The protests did not come from the Palestinian diaspora; they came from people with a burning sense of injustice at the completely disproportionate actions of the Israeli Government in relation to Gaza, and people who had seen some of the horrors perpetrated against Gaza. They showed the strength of feeling among the UK population. It behoves the Government to do something about the issue.

In such circumstances, I believe that all arms export licences should be suspended. Moreover, given Israel’s record of violating international law, the arms trade with Israel should be completely banned in both directions. The UK and the European Union have some of the world’s strictest rules in place for controlling the export of arms and components. Considering that Israel already has a history of using UK-supplied arms in the occupied territories, including Gaza, in breach of those rules, there is no excuse for the rules not being enforced. The UK’s relationship with Israel may have been profitable for arms companies, but it has had a devastating impact on the people of Gaza, which at the current rate of progress will not be rebuilt for many decades.

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[Grahame M. Morris]

That is part of the purpose of this debate, and of the historic vote that took place two weeks ago. We need to send out a number of messages to our Government and the Israeli Government, and a message of encouragement to the Palestinians engaging in an honest endeavour to find a peaceful solution. Yes, I agree.

I will conclude my remarks now, because I know a lot of Members are keen to participate. We have had decades of talk about peace, but to no avail. Now it is time for action, and I hope that the Minister will consider carefully the points that I and other Members put to him in this debate.

Several hon. Members rose—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. We have 30 Members who wish to speak. The time limit I am setting for each speech is four minutes. Members will be aware that if they take an intervention, that adds another minute; they can take up to two interventions, giving them six minutes. Members can do what they want—as always, we have a vibrant debate in this place—but they might want to consider taking a maximum of one intervention. Let the debate flow. I call Robert Halfon.

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[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. The problem is that the increasingly frequent terror attacks are constantly glorified by Hamas. The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) talked about being disproportionate, but if Israel did not have the iron dome system, thousands of Israelis would have been killed by the missiles fired by Hamas. If that had happened, would it have been seen as a proportionate response?

There is a lot of hard evidence showing that genuine humanitarian aid was misappropriated by Hamas diverting the resources from their original goal of saving the population and using them for the construction of the tunnels and the acquisition of arms. That cannot remain a peripheral concern to those who push for a peace treaty between the two countries. The problem of Israeli security is one that permeates every aspect of civilian life in Israel, so it remains necessarily omnipresent in any discussions between Israel and Palestine. That affects the problem of the reconstruction of Gaza, where the Israeli Government proved their good will by striking a deal with the Palestinian Authority in September, agreeing to a bigger influx of resources to Gaza under the supervision of UN officials. By contrast, Hamas has just glorified every single terrorist attack that hit Israel, including the death of a three-month-old baby girl—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Sir Alan Duncan]

Let me make it clear that Gaza is not the Palestinian Authority, and nor is Hamas. I have known Mahmoud Abbas for more than 20 years. He essentially recognises the state of Israel. He wants peace. I have seen the maps, the proposals and the details that have consistently been rejected by the Israeli Government. If only the Israeli Government could step forward and say yes, we would have a two-state solution with two countries living side-by-side in peace. Mahmoud Abbas has even offered a demilitarised Palestine with some other kind of security guarantee, so there would never need to be a single Palestinian soldier posing a risk—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. You cannot appeal to the Israelis’ better nature, because they do not have one. You can, however, threaten them financially. When £10 billion of loan guarantees were withheld by George Bush senior, the Israelis scuttled off to Madrid. It is only sanctions and an arms embargo that work. The anticipation of a two-state solution, which we all support as a cliché, is bogus, because there will not be a two-state solution. The Israelis have the fourth largest military force in the world and nuclear weapons. They believe that they can get away with anything, but they had better take a look at how the Berlin wall fell. They had better take a look at how apartheid in South Africa crumbled overnight. They had better take a look at how peace was brought about in Ireland. They do not have time on their side. There are now more Palestinians than Israeli Jews—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Mr Hancock]

If only somebody would enforce international humanitarian law! I agree entirely. The failure is that no one is prepared to take the next step. It is no good saying that there is a great resolution from the UN; I was at the UN last week and listened carefully to the words of the Secretary-General about the situation. Unfortunately, he knows that he is a political eunuch when it comes to providing anything that will really lead to Israel responding positively, creatively and helpfully.

The overwhelming majority of Palestinian people want peace. They were told that they would get justice on several occasions throughout several different presidential Administrations in the United States, but the United States, which still has the most clout, has failed to deliver the powerful pressure on Israel that would force it to look again. It is manifestly unfair for our Government to continue not to apply as much pressure as possible. If that means preventing our industry from selling weapons and other goods to Israel, so be it. As the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said, the one thing that wakes up the Israeli public and Israeli politicians is when they are hit with financial implications, which is something that we must explore.

If anything is to be learned from today’s debate, let the real expression of concern in this House be included in Hansard so that others can read it. All of us have concerns about rockets being fired and about people being killed by tanks mowing them down on the streets where they live. The situation is horrific and everyone condemns it, but that is not good enough, is it? Condemning something does not change anything.

What we need is a positive, hard punch that says that Israel needs to change. If not, it will become a pariah, similar to South Africa during the days of apartheid. Only when there was concerted effort against South Africa did it know that its time had run out. The Israelis have to be careful that they do not run out of time, because sooner or later the Palestinians will say, “There is no future for us here. We have no alternative but to continue what we have been doing.” That cannot be right, and it is not the solution that we want.

What we need is pressure from all the Governments who say that they want to support a two-state solution. Some 128 of them have now signed up, but what have they done since then to say that they would recognise a two-state solution? Very little—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. Unfortunately, we will now have to limit speeches to three minutes. I again encourage Members to consider the number of interventions that they take.