Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Anelay of St Johns on 17 November (HL2757), whether they plan to encourage international prosecution of settlement building as being a war crime according to the Rome Statute, in order to make possible a viable Palestinian state.

We have repeatedly condemned settlement announcements and will continue to call on the Israeli authorities to cease all settlement building and to remove illegal outposts, as required under international law. We continue to believe that negotiations toward a two-state solution are the best route to meeting Palestinian aspirations in reality and on the ground. We judge that attempts to seek International Criminal Court jurisdiction over the Occupied Territories at this stage could make a resumption of negotiations more difficult.