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Remaining Private Members' Bills
MARRIAGE CEREMONY (PRESCRIBED WORDS) BILL
Read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.--[Mr. Brazier.]
Bill immediately considered in Committee; reported, without amendment; read the Third time, and passed.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris):
Not moved.
Ordered,
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. MacKay.]
Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South):
Everyone who knows anything about the middle east expects peace to come through a series of building blocks. The first was Camp David; the second was the widely acclaimed Oslo accords; and the third was the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. The tragedy is that a small unrepresentative group of Muslim fundamentalists is seeking to derail the peace process. Their hearts are so full of hatred that they cannot tolerate a programme of peaceful co-existence between neighbours in the middle east. They believe that they can bomb their way into heaven, and into derailing the peace process in the middle east. I hope, as I am sure the whole House does, that they will fail, as I suspect they will, on both counts.
The objectives of the various parties to the peace process are, of course, different. Israel has always craved recognition by her neighbours--neighbours who sought to suffocate her at birth and to snuff out her existence both in 1967 and in 1973, and who until recently have always denied her right to exist.
Israel has craved peace because so many of her citizens have been affected by the wars that she has had to fight to secure her independence, and because between those wars she has been under constant attack from her neighbours. For example, the people in the north would suffer mortar attacks from the Lebanon. Israel sought peace as a means of giving her people security because she had suffered infiltration by guerrillas, and mortars had been thrust down on her people from the Golan. Hezbollah guerrillas used to infiltrate from the Lebanon, and still seek to do so.
Israel also hoped that as part of the peace process, her people would be able to discover information about Israelis missing in action since the 1980s. For example, Zachary Baumel went missing in 1982, and Ron Arad was captured in 1986. Several times I have met Zachary Baumel's parents, who are still desperate to discover what happened to their son nearly 15 years ago.
Many hon. Members have met the mother, brothers and daughter of Ron Arad. In 1986, when he was captured, his daughter was very young. She is now much older, yet during all that time she has not known what happened to her father. What sort of people will prevent a father from knowing his daughter over a period of nearly 10 years, much longer than the duration of the last war?
We must remember that it was Israel that kick-started the release of middle east hostages in the early 1990s. Israel released a flood of prisoners, thereby securing the release of Terry Waite and John McCarthy, in the hope of receiving back her own missing people. But that has not happened.
Of course we must recognise that the objectives of Israel's neighbours were different from hers. The Jordanians sought from peace economic advantage, increased investment and joint infrastructure projects. They also wanted to use Israel's knowledge of tourism to benefit their own tourist industry. The Palestinians sought an improvement in their living standards as well as the ability to rule themselves.
The history of the middle east demonstrates that our peacemakers are always as vulnerable to the assassin's bullet as the general is to hostile fire. King Abdullah, Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin all gave up their lives prematurely in the hope that their people would live in peace one with another. King Hussein has shown that he is luckier than a cat, because he has survived11 assassination attempts.
Kamikaze guerrillas have now killed scores of Israelis in the hope of derailing the peace process by altering public opinion in Israel. That is why the conference was held at Sharm-el-Sheikh earlier this year. No more suitable place could have been found for such a conference, because it is in territory that Israel returned to Egypt as part of the peace process.
When we consider what happened at the conference we must congratulate the Prime Minister on attending it,and on the positive approach that he adopted. Of course,we must also condemn those who did not go to the conference. We should condemn Syria, in particular, for refusing to go to the conference. Syria has provided hospitality for many of those who reject peace in the middle east. Syria has helped many of those seeking to derail the peace process in the middle east. Syria invaded the Lebanon and keeps troops there, and it allows Hezbollah guerillas in the Lebanon to become a force that is anxious to derail peace and to fight the state of Israel.
Syria did not go to that conference because it is not interested in defeating terrorism; Syria is interested in sponsoring terrorism. How can Syria ever expect the Israelis to return the Golan heights when it refused to attend a conference designed to defeat terrorism?Of course every Israeli knows that, until 1967, the Golan was used for hostile action against Israel. Since 1967, it has been used for purely peaceful purposes.
Apart from condemning Syria for not attending the conference, we must condemn Iran and Libya, which are the paymasters of international terrorism. We must recognise the dangers that Iran presents to peace not only in the middle east but to peace in the world because, within the next decade, it is very likely that Iran will become a nuclear power. The world must squeeze Iran now so that there might yet be a change of Government in that unhappy country.
We must congratulate our Prime Minister because only he and the Prime Minister of Israel were willing to condemn Iran's reaction to the bombs in Israel and Iran's sponsorship of international terrorism. Let any apologists for the Iranian regime remember that Iran praised the bombings after they had taken place. Indeed, I have been told that the Federal Republic of Germany has put out an arrest warrant for an Iranian Minister. No one should enter into partnership with Iran, and people should follow our Government's lead in condemning the Iranian regime.
I am surprised that the President of France did not seek to condemn Iran; let us remember that Iranians went to Paris to kill Mr. Bakhtiar, a former Prime Minister of Iran.
We should listen to what victims of terrorism are saying. We should also listen to friendly Governments in the middle east which give advice to this country. We should listen to Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Egypt. They say that Britain should not become a haven for Muslim fundamentalists seeking to wage war on friendly countries in the middle east.
We should not give asylum to political activists from the middle east who seek to abuse our hospitality by stirring up trouble there and by destroying our friendship and trade with those friendly nations. If we were to ask the President of Egypt and the Governments of Tunisia and of Saudi Arabia what they thought of the Asylum and Immigration Bill, we would quickly receive three assents to it.
Individuals sometimes come to this country to stir up trouble and to fight a war of Muslim fundamentalism. They are the blood brothers of those who went on the buses in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
We must also make certain that organisations in Britain do not fund terrorism in the middle east. We all know how people of the Irish diaspora in North America are used to fund terrorism in the United Kingdom. We must not allow individuals from the Palestinian diaspora and their sympathisers to fund terrorism in the middle east. It would be a great tragedy if they were to do so, and we shall be held partially responsible for it.
We must also ensure that we do not allow individuals to stir up a campaign of hatred on our university campuses, which can only influence the world outside the campuses.
I see that the National Union of Students has asked that action be taken on Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The NUS president, Mr. Jim Murphy, said at conference last week that the union should not be soft on HUT. He went on to say that HUT was filth and filth belongs in the bin.
I apologise for straying slightly beyond the Foreign Office's remit by saying that, as everyone condemns HUT, there is some surprise that there has so far been no successful prosecution of that organisation in the United Kingdom. Universities such as that at Birmingham have banned HUT from their campus, but there has so far been no prosecution. It is wrong for any organisation to preach religious or racial hatred on our university campuses. Members of such organisations are the blood brothers of the bus bombers of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
It is important that our country takes action against such individuals, but it is equally important that Mr. Arafat is seen to arrest and prosecute. So far, he has been strong on arrests but not quite so strong on prosecutions. It is important that the Palestinian national covenant is amended within the time scale promised by Mr. Arafat. Were he to fail to do so, that of itself would be a danger to the peace process.
We in this country must, as a fellow democracy, show understanding of the reaction of the Israeli Government to assaults on their people and their democratic process. The tragedy is that those who are fighting the peace process in the middle east all come not from democracies but from one-party dictatorships. We must understand that when any democracy sees its people attacked, as Israel has done, it has to react to ensure that peace and democracy prevail and that its people are not bombed and bullied into submission.
That, notwithstanding Standing Order No. 14B (Proceedings under an Act or on European Community Documents), the Speaker shall, at any one sitting of the House--
(i) put the Questions on the Motions in the name of Mr. Secretary Lilley relating to the draft Social Security (Minimum Contributions to Appropriate Personal Pensions Schemes) Order 1996, the draft Social Security (Reduced Rates of Class I Contributions) (Salary Related Contracted-out Schemes) Order 1996 and the draft Social Security (Reduced Rates of Class I Contributions and Rebates) (Money Purchase Contracted-out Schemes) Order 1996 not later than one and a half hours after the commencement of the proceedings on the first such Motion; and
(ii) put the Questions on the Motions in the name of Mr. Secretary Dorrell relating to Special Grant Report (No. 17) and in the name of Mr. Secretary Hague relating to Special Grant Report (Wales) not later than one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the first of these Motions;
and the said Motions may be proceeded with, though opposed, after Ten o'clock.--[Mr. MacKay.]
Middle East Peace Process2.33 pm
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