Oral evidence

Taken before the International Development Committee on Tuesday 11 November 2003

Members present:

Tony Baldry, in the Chair

John Barrett

Mr John Battle

Mr Piara S Khabra

Chris McCafferty

Mr Robert Walter

__________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: MR WILLIAM BELL, Advocacy Officer for the Palestinians and Israel, Christian Aid, MR CHRIS SAUNDERS, Programme Officer, Middle East, Save the Children, MR ADAM LEACH, Regional Director, (Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Commonwealth of Independent States), Oxfam, and DR MOHAMMED SHADID, The Welfare Association, Jerusalem, examined.

Chairman: Thank you very much for coming and giving evidence and thank you also for your written submissions.

 

Q79  Mr Khabra: In our recent visit we saw the impact of the occupation with checkpoints and it is very difficult for NGOs particularly to make sure that they are able to provide emergency aid. At the same time, you have a responsibility to see how to develop a war zone. It may be possible for you to incorporate emergency relief with the development work but what we have noticed is the impact is enormous on the lives of people, business, employment etc. In your experience, what development work, in contrast to humanitarian relief, is possible in a situation like that of occupation, with restrictions and lack of freedom for the people? What development projects will you be running before the current intifada/closure has affected your work?

Mr Bell: The important thing to notice first is that despite the frustrations of occupation which the Committee will have seen are very obvious -- they range from closures to checkpoints to curfews, which obviously has a tremendous impact on the ability of Palestinians to get around, which is a central part of any development work -- long term development is still possible and essential. The one point I want to accentuate here is that however difficult it is -- and it is difficult -- long term development is essential as long as it is coupled with an active political engagement. Long term development in a vacuum is not going to produce much in the way of sustainable development or progress. It is essential that you have that political engagement from the international community and, in our case, the UK government. In terms of types of development, my colleagues will have a lot to add, but from our experience there is a lot that you can do in development of people in their capacity building which is less affected by the damage and destruction caused by the infrastructure and buildings etc.

Mr Saunders: In terms of some illustrations of effective development which has been going on throughout the intifada, I have come up with three particular examples which illustrate both how and why it is important that development is still considered to be a viable and feasible process. The first would be to look at the community midwife training that the British government has funded Save the Children to undertake in the Gaza Strip. That work has been going on for eight or nine years now. In spite of the massive constraints that the current situation has imposed in the Gaza Strip in terms of access and movement, that programme has continued and the training has continued. Indeed, the very relevance of community midwifery as opposed to hospital based midwifery has been accentuated by the intifada. That is one illustration of considerably important development work that has been undertaken successfully. It is currently being undertaken in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. The second is education through the Ministry of Education and education curriculum development which has been working very effectively in terms of producing new, relevant curricula over the last two or three years. It is now 60 per cent implemented. It is being implemented incrementally year by year and that is a very effective example of development in practice, undertaken by the PA with support from others. The third is the child law review and the national plan of action, again very critical capacity related activities that have their focus on youth. It is a very important area, so there are three current examples of development work which are in place and operating effectively. Perhaps there are some illustrations of approaches which are less effective. There are issues around food aid and the way that the approach to the implementation of food aid is undermining local production in some areas and is, in a sense, not directed at the key issues and fundamental problems but more at the symptoms of the problems. That has in some respects had an undermining effect so there is a contrast there between an emergency input which has less of a development focus and some very effective development work.

Mr Leach: I would like to add, in support of what my colleagues have said, that whilst development action is possible to some extent, is certainly needed and should be pursued, we do not want to lose sight of the fact that the destruction of people's lives in some cases and livelihoods is enormous and widespread. The World Bank reported at the end of 2002 that 92,000 Palestinians of 128,000 employed in Israel before the intifada had lost their jobs. With the closure policy, agriculture as a main source of income for the majority of people has been seriously affected. The presence of settlements and other factors make that as a source of livelihood very difficult. We should not lose sight of declines in security. Whilst there is an increased need for development action, it has also become increasingly difficult to achieve this. It is important to stress that we are concerned that the achievement of millennium development goals for 2015 is some way off.

Dr Shadid: I am grateful to have the opportunity to be with you today. I would like to reiterate what my colleagues have said regarding the Palestinian people's needs, aspirations and expectations. The Palestinian people are grateful to you for the financial support that you are giving them but they sincerely hope that your support will extend beyond the humanitarian and development support, more to the political. The Palestinians say, "We would rather go to bed hungry and have our liberty and be free from occupation than remain under occupation with our bellies full." I would sincerely hope that you will intensify any effort that you have for a peace process and for the liberation of the Palestinian people from the Israeli occupation. Regarding the direct question on aid, the Welfare Association before the intifada had been disbursing about $7 million in development assistance to the Palestinian people. Now we are disbursing about 30 million. It means that 30 per cent of our work is in development and 70 per cent of our work is related to emergency. We always keep in mind that it is an emergency and we are addressing immediate humanitarian goals and objectives. However, we make sure that there is a developmental impact and side to the aid. For example, there is a village named Shibteen in West Ramallah with a population of 1,500 people. 90 per cent of the working population depends on labour in Israel. 90 per cent are now unemployed. Through a project with funding from DfID, through the World Bank Palestinian NGO Project and managed by a consortium of the Welfare Association, the British Council and the Charities Foundation, we have supported them in the building of a community centre for $55,000. It gave 1,7000 work days for the unemployed and it established a community centre which will be used for programmes in health awareness, education, computers for children and youth, as well as various community activities. This is a development project, and at the same time it addresses joblessness and unemployment in that particular village. One man said that he had not worked a day in two years and now he is grateful to DfID, the British government and to all the partners involved for the opportunity to work one month on this particular project. This is how we address the emergency situation and, at the same time, we help build community assets and provide developmental impact.

 

Q80  Mr Khabra: Due to the latest situation, which is a serious one, how much trust and confidence have you lost from the people, in your ability to help people? There must be some impact on your relationship with the local communities concerned.

Mr Bell: Do you mean how much confidence have the local population that we are working with lost in us?

 

Q81  Mr Khabra: Yes.

Mr Bell: Christian Aid, as opposed to the other three organisations here, is non-operational on the ground -- i.e., we support local organisations both Palestinian and Israeli. We have not found that what we call our partners have lost confidence in us. What perhaps might be more accurate is that they are rapidly losing confidence in the international community as a whole. Specifically over the last three years but also generally speaking, they feel that the international community has somewhat deserted their humanitarian needs. For example, we have seen peace processes come and go, as have they. We might have thought that Palestinians would have been particularly grateful for the recent introduction of the road map and, more recently, the Geneva accords. However, the most common response has been, "We do not really need another initiative. What we need is implementation of those international laws that would guarantee our security and our safety." That goes for both the Israeli and Palestinian populations. If you are talking about a lack of confidence, it is much more the lack of meaningful engagement from the international community and specifically the quartet to address the issues that is underlying the cause of their problems. In this case, for Palestinians, that is the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Chairman: Judging by the nods of assent, I think the other witnesses agree with that answer.

 

Q82  Mr Walter: I would like to develop this point in the field of advocacy. During our visit, we heard from the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that in a manmade situation such as we have in the occupied Palestinian territories, advocacy is a necessary part of the humanitarian package. There are obviously quasi-official level organisations -- I am thinking of the Negotiation Support Unit which has funding from the UK -- but I wonder if you could tell us how your work is balanced between service provision and advocacy and whether the balance of that has changed over recent years or just in the current situation?

Mr Leach: We need to be clear about what we mean by "advocacy" and if we say that advocacy is an opportunity to allow people, who find it difficult or do not have the opportunity to speak for themselves, to speak with them and on their behalf and therefore from the reality of the situation, we are balancing the delivery of assistance with the need to voice those concerns. To speak from the experience of ordinary people, I would like to use one example of a village called Madama close to Nablus, where, on successive occasions villagers working with Oxfam staff have been interfered with, shot at by settlers and ultimately the water infrastructure has been semi-permanently damaged. We are going to make renewed efforts to try to repair that spring. An example like that of the Madama spring illustrates the importance of speaking from the experience of what people face. We believe that is essential. Moreover, we think that it is important, building on the last discussion, that we do speak and in this way help to hold accountable institutions and bodies that have authority to make a difference and to bring pressure to bear on other institutions like the European Union. We understand from officials in the European Union that they depend upon members of Westminster and other governments to act and respond and speak on these issues.

Mr Bell: Christian Aid has definitely increased its capacity to do advocacy as we have seen the importance of long term development being coupled and working in tandem with a political engagement. To this sort of humanitarian crisis, there is only a political solution. Aid in itself would only provide a band aid type solution. Our advocacy is very much rooted in the experience of our partners, both Israeli and Palestinian. Most of our analysis is derived from their experience. The reason that we have concentrated some of our time in advocacy with the British government is because we see that the British government does have a constructive, positive role on the development of the situation. We have been very supportive, I like to think, and do support DFID's work in the area but one thing that is quite clear is that the British government has, to a certain extent, lacked a joined up policy. We have seen DFID give an enormous amount either through its donations to the PA or to the United Nations, UNWRA. A lot of that aid has been wasted and destroyed through the invasions and activities of the Israeli defence forces. There we are obviously talking about British taxpayers' money but at the same time we can see the DTI issuing export licences for arms. We can see the DTI promoting Israel as one of 14 target markets for British investment and, to me, that sends out a mixed signal about British engagement on this issue. Christian Aid is not looking for punitive measures, but we are certainly looking for a joined up policy that would suggest that we really do mean business on this and that we cannot accept a situation where taxpayers' money, through development contributions to the recipients in the Palestinian territories, is offset by this seeming normalisation of the situation on the other hand. In terms of advocacy, one other angle which I think is important for us to get clarification from the government about has been most recently illustrated last month on 14 October. On the same day, the British government abstained from a UN Security Council resolution declaring that the wall was illegal, which would be a helpful reminder to the international community that the wall is illegal. At the same time, Jack Straw in the House of Commons that same day was declaring that the British government considered the wall illegal. It is sending out mixed messages. I think the government needs to address that issue, which is why we have engaged in advocacy to ensure that all the parts fit together in a consistent manner.

 

Q83  Chairman: My understanding was that the British government had brokered an amended motion on the security fence in the General Assembly.

Mr Bell: That is correct. They did^[1].

 

Q84  John Barrett: Could I ask about channels of communication between occupiers and the occupied and also ask if the task force for project implementation is the way you channel concerns of individual organisations to exert pressure on Her Majesty's Government to put pressure on the Israeli authorities? How have the communications developed and how could they develop?

Dr Shadid: I am not sure if there are good channels of communication between the International Development Agency and the Israeli Government. There is contact and coordination between AIDA, which is the body representing all the international organisations, and the Israeli branch of government that is dealing with the occupied Palestinian territories. That type of communication helps somewhat in the facilitation of the movement of international staff, but it has a very marginal effect on Palestinian or local staff having the ability to move. Movement is extremely difficult. I will give you an example. You heard lately that the Israeli Government is easing up restrictions on movement in the occupied territories. That has been extremely marginal. My brother in law lives in Ramallah and 10 or 12 days ago he had to have open heart surgery. Israeli physicians at the hospital in Jerusalem -- and they are excellent, by the way -- accepted to do the surgery. He had to move from Ramallah to the hospital, a trip that normally takes 35 minutes. It took him over three hours with all the proper papers in the ambulance etc., to get to the hospital for open heart surgery. This is the extent of facilitation that exists. We have a programme officer who lives in Nablus and comes to our offices in Jerusalem. From Nablus -- some of you have visited and seen the road -- it normally takes about 40 to 50 minutes. Now, it takes him anywhere between three and nine hours to get to the office. He has an AIDA card because we are members of AIDA. That is supposed to facilitate his movement. Most of the talk about facilitation of movement is more for PR and is cosmetic. As long as the Israeli Government does not come under international pressure to facilitate movement of humanitarian international aid, they will continue to get away with it.

Mr Leach: We coordinate with the District Coordination Office of the Israeli Defence Force. Many non-government organisations refuse to do this kind of coordination as a matter of principle, believing that free access should be guaranteed under international humanitarian law. Of course, that is correct. Our Palestinian staff often get treated badly, are made to wait unaccountably and arbitrarily for hours at checkpoints. When we do get access, we are able sometimes to negotiate on behalf of some communities for the removal of household, human and animal waste, but we cannot negotiate on behalf of every community. Daur Sharaf is a village near Nablus where we have managed to get in and rectify a situation where a system of checkpoints and blockages had prevented people from getting rid of their waste but we cannot do it for everybody and nor should we try. There are institutions which are better placed to do that. For instance, Mekorot as the Israeli water company would be much better placed to provide an effective drinking water system than we can with our less cost effective systems, and which we are only using because people are in desperate need.

Mr Saunders: The critical point is that this effort which is applied is a constant for our staff, whether international or national staff. I do not know what the proportion may be but you can assume perhaps 50 or 60 per cent of the working time is actually spent in this sort of negotiation. It is not facilitation; it is negotiation around blockage, both bureaucratic and physical, and it is extremely wearing, extremely demoralising and extremely wasteful.

 

Q85  John Barrett: When we were there, I was told by a local NGO that there are more international NGOs in the Palestinian territories than any other area on earth. The task force on project implementation gave me the impression that what happens is that individual NGOs try to negotiate as best they can almost at individual checkpoints. I want to ask you the wider question about coordination, not simply about access but about programmes and emergency aid as well. Do you just take notes of what you each do or are you harmonising programmes? To be more positive about it, are you positively planning to coordinate a response as international NGOs to the Palestinian Authority's own full development plan which will need funding? Will you be coming in together behind that?

Mr Bell: In terms of flagging up those bodies which are designed to coordinate and avoid duplication of NGO activities, there are two fora. One exists in Jerusalem called the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), which holds regular meetings. Christian Aid is not a member of it because we do not have a presence or office there, but they are very functional. They are coordinating with the Israeli authorities in terms of access. I hasten to add that that does not apply to the Palestinian humanitarian aid workers. In this country we have something called the Platform for those agencies that work on the issues of Palestinian territories. Again, we coordinate and discuss those issues that are important to us at the time, which helps to avoid any duplication and gives us an idea of where we are all at.

 

Q86  John Barrett: You said there were two. What was the other one? Is there one in Gaza?

Mr Bell: No. There is one in Britain and one in Jerusalem. That is purely an international agency. I should have added that there is obviously a network of Palestinian non-governmental organisations, called PNGO, and they very much coordinate as well amongst themselves and with the Palestinian Authority. Some of the Palestinian NGOs are now subcontracted out. For example, the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, because they are better placed through their historical development for delivering primary healthcare in the more far flung areas of the West Bank and Gaza, where the PA does not have the ability to do that. That is a good example of national level coordination amongst Palestinians.

Mr Leach: There are a lot of organisations and we are aware of that. There is a lot of increasingly effective donor coordination as well and that is observed by the World Bank office. Oxfam chairs an Emergency Water and Sanitation and Hygiene coordination group, EWASH, of which the Palestinian Water Authority and USAID and others are members. It meets monthly to share information and to prioritise needs and coordinate responses. It is through that mechanism amongst others -- the PWA in particular -- that we are responding to efforts by the PA to coordinate plans.

 

Q87  Mr Battle: Will you be getting behind the development plan that is going to be put forward at the end of the month?

Mr Leach: The Ministry of Planning produces regular priorities and we see that as being a continuation of established mechanisms to which we do respond already.

Dr Shadid: AIDA is an umbrella for international organisations and they hold board meetings, special sessions, to talk about grants and programmes and to prevent duplication of funding for the same area, for the same institution. That has been effective. There is also coordination at Palestinian level. Recently a forum has been established which represents all Palestinian NGOs and the unions and networks. There are four unions and networks and they represent about 1,000 Palestinian NGOs. They coordinate amongst themselves, plus coordination through the World Bank and UNHCR of the United Nations. Also, there is sectoral coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Health, as well as other ministries. At that level, there is coordination between local NGOs, the Palestinian government and the international NGOs. Coordination is taking place in this process.

 

Q88  Mr Khabra: In order to provide the delivery of service, it is important that you must have coordination with the PA and UNRWA. If you work with the local NGOs, they can be helpful in order to have coordination with the PA and UNRWA. How much service delivery is done by NGOs? Do you think the fact that the PA is not the main service provider to its people in the current situation undermines the PA's legitimacy? It is important that all the different NGOs, the PA and the UNRWA together have coordination and they can work together to have better service delivery.

Mr Saunders: The Ministry of Education runs schools very effectively. There is very little duplication. There are no parallel services. The Ministry of Health is an example where you do get problems of parallel services with ----

 

Q89  Chairman: We saw a number of schools being run by UNRWA and one of the things we noticed was that some services were being delivered to refugees and some services were being delivered to non-refugees.

Mr Saunders: I will revise that point. UNRWA responsibility is the provision of education for the refugee communities. The Ministry of Education responsibility is for the non-refugee Palestinians. Thank you for that correction. I would not call that parallel service. That is part of the mandate. In terms of health delivery services, there you do get delivery of services by NGOs, by the Ministry of Health, by UNRWA. That encapsulates the number of different possibilities but in that there is quite possibly potential core undermining and coordination with the Ministry of Health is more problematic because of that far more open feel, if you like.

Mr Leach: We and our partners as Oxfam and Oxfam International believe that the Palestinian Authority is the credible and only partner for us to work with. However, we also recognise that the PA is working under enormous restriction. Much of government is handicapped by restrictions imposed by the occupying power. We are put in a very difficult position because we as international organisations could on the one hand be described as undermining the PA and its ability to deliver and, on the other hand, subsidising the occupation. We are acutely conscious of the dilemma that we are put into, but I think it is important to stress that we recognise the PWA as our principal partner in the Palestinian Authority for delivery of water, as the regulator for that sector. We know that the PWA is undergoing a structural transformation at the moment and the World Bank water department will become a major supplier. We are trying to work with other institutions to make sure that it is as effective as it possibly could be but I think, as we have all witnessed with the start of the wall and the pursuit of that disastrous policy, it is going to be increasingly difficult for the PA to exercise any kind of meaningful governance. We are having to work with a number of increasingly tightening constraints.

Mr Bell: I agree with what my colleagues have said, largely, but maybe I can put a slightly different complexion on the question. The PA has definitely lost some credibility amongst the Palestinian population but I would not put that necessarily down to the fact that they have not been the main service provider, such as for health and education. Where they have lost credibility is because of the situation that the PA has found itself in. The first ten years of the PA's existence under Oslo were not all that the Palestinian population expected them to be. There was a lack of prioritisation of poverty alleviation but most importantly for most Palestinians credibility was taken away when they saw that, to a large extent, the PA was unable to act as an equal negotiating partner with the Israelis in order to improve their lives. That is where most credibility has been lost. The way Palestinian society has developed, a lot of Palestinians have grown up and got used very much to the idea of a very strong civil society, delivering a lot of basic services. The PA in its attempts to centralise has sometimes upset that balance, probably necessarily, but that is the chief source of the credibility loss to the PA.

Dr Shadid: There are three types of schools. There are private schools run by charitable societies. There are UNRWA schools which are only up to preparatory level. There are government schools which are up to the final grade of baccalaureate. The UNRWA schools constitute about 15 to 20 per cent of all the schools in the West Bank and Gaza. The private schools are roughly about five per cent, and the rest are all government schools. There is coordination in this area. The government does not address the need of pre-school education, and kindergartens. This is all being handled by the NGOs and there is coordination on this level. With regard to health, if we talk about six years ago, there has been a strain in the relationship between the NGOs and the Palestinian Authority, but since then in the last four years that relationship has substantially improved and there is now cooperation and coordination. We held a conference about two years ago on cooperation and complementarity between the PNA and the NGOs and I think it has gone a long way towards improving functional and working relations between the two. For example, right now the Welfare Association is supporting health equipment to the hospitals in the occupied territories with a grant of $8 million. There is a committee composed representatives from the private sector, the NGOs and the government. The committee is responsible for allocating the equipment to the most needy hospitals. They are now working very well together. When the need is so much and the situation is so bad, there is not much time for bickering. Everybody pitches in and they work together to try to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian population.

 

Q90  Mr Khabra: It is well known to the international community that Hamas is providing support to families in different ways. I hope that you all know about that. What sort of relationship do you have with Hamas, which is known to be a terrorist organisation? It is popular just because of the support they are giving to the people who are poor, those who have suffered for one reason or the other. They are giving food, clothing, medicine and so on. What is the situation with regard to Hamas?

Mr Leach: As impartial humanitarian organisations, as you know, we do not make our decisions about assistance on the basis of politics, race, creed, or colour. We are impartial agencies and we are working with ordinary people. The choices of ordinary people about their affiliations is not a concern for us. We are concerned about the needs of communities that have been put into extremely difficult circumstances. We are working with local village councils and municipalities and recognised structures within the Palestinian Authority to provide assistance to those people. We do not have connections with Hamas.

Dr Shadid: I think the issue of Hamas and families benefiting from international aid is being overblown and exaggerated. Hamas does not need the support of the international community. They have their own channels of funding in grass roots communities from all over to support the families of the deceased and others. Those who suffer the most are those who have nothing to do with politics or one faction or the other. We have a programme of supporting 1,200 families with funding from the Arab Gulf countries, family to family support of $100 a month. The way we identify those families is through community organisations, who do a needs assessment and those who are not receiving any support are the ones who receive this support. I do not think it is an issue. I think it is over-exaggerated. If a child is hungry, we have to feed that child, no matter who the father is.

 

Q91  John Barrett: If I could move on to the question of the destruction of infrastructure by the Israeli military, schools, clinics, and Gaza Airport, the EU has estimated almost 40 million euros-worth of damage has been done. Could I ask about the possibility of compensation, documentation of what has been destroyed, and how could the loss be minimised in future? Is any action to be taken possibly in the future with regard to compensation?

Mr Leach: We do document damage through the mechanism that I described, the Emergency Water and Sanitation Committee. We also record incidents that affect our work too through OCHA, the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The question of damage and destruction and therefore compensation is extremely difficult. We have replaced broken infrastructure and continue to do so. We have examples of that as we have set out in our submission. It is very difficult to quantify the full damage of the destruction because it is not just visible infrastructure; it is also damage to socio-economic status as well, prolonged over time. This is the first problem, which is about quantification and how to do that, but then there is the question about our ability to claim compensation given that, in the case of Oxfam, we are working with a one million euro fund from the European Union. Frankly, we feel that the responsibility lies with the institutions who give that money. There is another problem because we are also operating on general income, taxpayers' money, through those institutions but also through private donations. We believe that there should be effort by the institutions, particularly the Government in Israel who are responsible for operating under rules of engagement, to account for damage that has been done. Our principal concern is about the counterproductive nature of the measures that are being taken. We have not focused so much on compensatory action. We believe that institutions should take responsibility, principally those institutions that provide the funds in the first place.

Mr Saunders: Also, there has been recently considerable focus on the infrastructure but there is a lot more which goes on in terms of wastage and destruction, in terms of the human capacity, not just in terms of lives and health but in terms of the whole economic undermining, in terms of the service providers who are constantly being thwarted to make access to those services available. This is all part of the wastage within the system that, as agencies, we have over many years been providing and the British and other governments have been supporting through aid.

Mr Bell: It is important to understand sometimes the nature of the destruction. Often, Israel will engage in security actions which it will explain in security terms but it becomes very problematic to explain when you look at the grass roots, at the closer level and at the actual destruction, apart from what you can see very visibly such as municipal buildings, where indeed there may have been either snipers or terrorists who were attacking Israelis. When you visit, as I and my colleagues have done, opticians' clinics, for example, run by the medical relief committees and you see all of their optics, all of their equipment purely for ophthalmic purposes completely destroyed as well as the office ransacked, and when you see photographs of directors of organisations with their faces burnt out and graffiti on the wall, you realise that this is not just about security. There seems to be more. I am not going to suggest what it is but a lot of it is about wanton destruction and the psychological as well as the financial impact that that has on the communities that people live in.

Dr Shadid: The destruction has had a devastating effect on the Palestinian NGO community. After the spring of 2002 and the reinvasion of all the West Bank, granting countries decided to do damage assessment. As part of that effort, we were asked to carry out damage assessment for the NGOs. We found that 120 Palestinian NGOs incurred direct damage. 69 have incurred damage to their property and assets of over $5,000. Some of those NGOs like the Peace Dialogue Centre in Bethlehem have incurred damage of about $200,000. A teachers' training centre in Ramallah has incurred damage of about $25,000. The al-Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah has incurred about $15,000 of damage and the wanton destruction of paintings in that cultural centre is unbelievable. We have given support to 69 NGOs in restarting-up so that they can resume their services to the community of half a million dollars from DFID. All of them are grateful to you and to your people for this support. That has really been of tremendous help. The NGOs are very nervous about the destruction of their property and assets which enable them to deliver services to the community. They hope and expect the donor community to make representations to the Israeli government not to do it again, rather than compensation. They feel that this is far more effective than getting involved in claims and counterclaims.

 

Q92  John Barrett: Specifically, what about the question of how the access to water resource has changed over the past couple of years with the expansion of Israeli settlements, roads and general access to water used for agriculture?

Mr Leach: With the closure, checkpoints, blockages and so on, transportation costs for water have forced up prices by as much as 80 per cent. In some places, water supply has been reduced by as much as 75 per cent. Settlers in the West Bank consume five times that of Palestinian villages. We are concerned that water access in terms of quantity and quality has been seriously damaged in the short term, and possibly permanently, for thousands of people in the West Bank. We are concerned about two places particularly. First of all, in the Jordan River basin, where 25 per cent of the population are Palestinian. They only enjoy 50 per cent of their rights to water because they have access to only 12 per cent of water supplies. In the Western ground water basin, the Palestinian Hydrology Group, which is a Palestinian NGO with whom we work, estimates that Palestinians will lose nearly 18 per cent of their share of the water basin as a result of the construction of the wall. What we have witnessed over the last two years or so is a major decline in access to water and also concern about the quality of water. From 69 per cent of samples undertaken through a water survey by the Jenin Municipality Water Department and the Ministry of Health, the results were alarmingly high in terms of water borne disease. The tests failed World Health Organisation standards. Water borne disease is worsening. Deteriorating sewerage systems and so on are making it increasingly serious for people and access to communities to conduct surveys makes it hard to collect information and to analyse it effectively. There is the additional problems that I described earlier in relation to disposal of waste.

 

Q93  John Barrett: What can be done that would help improve the situation of access to water by the Palestinians?

Mr Leach: We have talked during this discussion about the fundamental problem. The concern we face and facing this Committee is that it is relatively easy to talk about measures that can be taken, but fundamentally we believe and we know that the situation has got worse for people. The situation now requires a political solution and alternatives to security measures which are counterproductive and not delivering the security for Israelis and that are producing a much more serious crisis for Palestinians and Israelis. We can talk about measures to ease closure, which we believe should happen, with immediate effect. We think there should also be immediate efforts to end the construction of the wall and to remove the wall that has been constructed. We think this has to be put into the context of measures to find alternative solutions to the fundamental problems.

 

Q94  Chairman: We did not go to Gaza this time but many of us have been to Gaza and the West Bank and one of the things which struck us was the huge number of NGOs. Many of the Palestinian NGOs are funded by international NGOs. I am a little unclear as to how they plumbed into civil society, how representative they are, who are they representative of and how civil society expressed itself in the Palestinian territories. We were slightly concerned when we met the Palestinian Minister of Education who expressed concerns that the international community and some of the donors switched their funding to what he described as "academic" projects by NGOs. By that he meant projects which included democracy building, good governance and so forth, rather than simply service provision. How do you see yourselves and other NGOs working to strengthen Palestinian civil society and promote democracy within the Palestinian territories? Is it possible to connect with Palestinian civil society in a manner which enhanced participation and is reflective of a Palestinian democratic tradition? Is there a choice that has to be made between advocacy, long term development and service delivery, or do you see all these dimensions as being equally important?

Dr Shadid: The impression that some of the funding will go to advocacy or academic research is understandable because there is so much need for services. The concern is a valid concern. However, there should be balance in terms of funding where the national authority is capable. They should be funded to pay for the services they are expected provide for their own people. There are certain areas they cannot reach because of restrictions on movement and NGOs can reach those situations. This is where NGO funding is useful and should be provided. There has to be a coordinated effort and transparency in terms of aid. Some granting governments -- not the UK -- refuse to channel any aid through Palestinian national authorities who have to pay the salaries of school teachers and even some universities. How do we deal with civil society and advocacy and supporting civil society? If we come to a child in a village and tell him we want to teach him about democracy, he will tell us to go home because he sees what is happening to him on the ground. He sees there is no international action taking place. He sees that he was born under occupation, that occupation has been tolerated by the international community for 35 years and that another occupation, in Kuwait, was not tolerated for one year. This is a double standard, so he does not want to hear about democracy. How do we deal with that? We deal with that through providing service delivery provisions for NGOs, coupled with capacity building in terms of governance, training people and community participation in the development of projects, their own needs assessment and community participation in the ownership of those projects. That is direct, practical aid. Meanwhile, when we talk about democracy, if they act democratically in their own organisation with regular elections and membership being open -- this is what we demand from NGOs that we support -- we believe this is a mechanism that is useful and helpful and deserves lots of support.

Mr Bell: It is important to note the situation -- not that we can fail to notice it -- under which the Palestinian NGOs operate. That has been one since 1967 of Israeli occupation and, before that, Jordanian and Egyptian occupation, although they might call it something different but that is effectively what it was. Civil society has a strong history of development and many people will say that Palestinians represent some of the most educated people within the Middle East. They have a strong tradition of education because of the strength of civil society. With the advent of the Oslo accords and, if you like, the parachuting in of the Palestinian Authority, obviously that has been a challenge to Palestinian civil society. There is a growing degree of harmonisation between the two communities but it is still a very young process. To reiterate what Mohammed was saying, it is very difficult to talk to people about democracy and the need for participation when they see no hope, so it is very difficult for them to think in democratic terms. Also, they have had no participation in terms of the bigger ideas that have gone on to dictate their lives. There was very little participation of grass roots society or civil society, if you like, with the Oslo accords. All those negotiations were conducted externally. The refugee population within Lebanon, Syria and Jordan were not consulted. The people of Gaza and the West Bank were not consulted. That has caused friction. Undoubtedly, yes, there is an unusual proliferation of NGOs within the West Bank and that is because of the difficulties of association. For example, let us take PARC, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee. They have two headquarters, essentially. The main headquarters is in Jerusalem but they also have what is a growing headquarters in Gaza because the two organisations can physically never meet because they are unable to get from Gaza to the West Bank. People do have in localised areas a need for what is, to all intents and purposes, a proliferation of committees, but it is easy to see how that has happened and that is because of the political landscape that has dominated the region for years.

 

Q95  Chairman: Just before Adam and Chris respond, we understand the difficulties on the ground. I think my question was more directed to this: how do you help? One understands all the problems, but how do you help - do you help or are you able to help - build up Palestinian civil society capacity? Otherwise you are just going to have a completely dependent society at every level. We asked UNWRA what they were doing, because they have been there since 1948, and one of the answers one of them gave was "Actually, the Palestinians trust us more than they do the Palestinian Authority." So I think there are concerns about whom represents whom. How do you get - given all the difficulties on the ground - some degree of legitimacy of who is expressing views to what and how do you get some capacity building within civil society?

Mr Leach: I think the issue is an extremely important one, and I am glad that it has been raised, because I think it is very important that we ask appropriate questions for the situation. I think it is very important that we do not 'exceptionalise' this situation, that we do not pathologise it so that the sort of question that you are asking gets treated somehow differently from any other part of the world where people have rights to representation and participation that are respected as a straightforward normality, even if it is difficult to change power structures. We are all extremely perplexed by this prolonged 'exceptionalisation' of this situation - if you will pardon the word - but the fact is that we work in a very fragmented context, one in which normal measures cannot be pursued because we have to go to extraordinary lengths to find ways around the obstacles and obstructions. I think some of the examples that we used about the prevention of Palestinians, who are working for international organisations as well as independently, simply moving around is a gross problem. What we are trying to do, for example, is to provide ways to support Palestinian organisations (I mentioned the Palestinian Hydrology Group, for example, and other examples have been given) to increase technical capacity and know-how to be able to provide services. We employ a majority of Palestinians for that purpose and we also involve them in our full range of processes including advocacy, and we are also trying to make our work in that situation - and, therefore, the lives and issues and interests of Palestinians - relevant to wider issues, and wider issues relevant to them. So, for example, we have supported Palestinian participation in preparation meetings for WTO summits. A particular issue, of course, is engagement in the search for alternative solutions and, specifically, some kind of international mechanism for protection under international humanitarian law that can create stability and accountable institutions. In other words, we are trying to find ways to include Palestinians in wider debates that are pertinent to a normalisation of the situation. The other thing that is important to stress is the point that I think William made which is about the need to work across civil society in both societies, not just in the Palestinian civil society but in Israel as well with Israeli organisations and Palestinian organisations. Oxfam GB and other Oxfams are working with organisations in that society as well, as are other UK organisations.

Mr Saunders: Very briefly, I think. We are talking about a proliferation of both international and national non-government organisations working in the occupied territories and obviously there are exceedingly good and less good organisations within that mass. I think, as professional, proficient development organisations, we all recognise and have increasingly recognised over the last decade or more, the importance of effective consultation and participation with the communities and the people that we are working with, whether it is with organisations or community groups, and that you do not deliver effective aid, whether it is emergency aid or development, without that. So we certainly, in the partnerships that we establish, emphasise time and again the need to talk, listen, understand and to develop a bottom-up approach to the work that we are doing. It is such a fundamental to the way that we work. However, there are some organisations that do not do it that way and some organisations that are not recipient to that approach.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

 

Examination of Witness

Witness: MR JEFF HALPER, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, examined.

 

Q96  Chairman: Jeff, could you firstly, in literally a couple of sentences, introduce yourself and, just for the record tell us a little bit about the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Who do you represent? Is it an NGO? Is it a charity? Who are your supporters? How is it funded? Just a bit so that other Parliamentary colleagues, when they are reading this evidence, have some idea of where you are coming from?

Mr Halper: I am the co-ordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, because there is a very strong Israeli component in this whole issue of developing among the Palestinians. We are a coalition of a large number of Israeli peace and human rights organisations that got together actually about six or seven years when there was a real concern that the Oslo Peace Process was collapsing and that Israeli civil society had to be much more involved in resisting the occupation and leading the way towards peace and developing relations with Palestinian civil society, something that had not been very strong up until that time. The issue that we focused on at that time, in talking with Palestinians, was the issue of house demolitions. Since 1967 Israel has demolished more than 11,000 Palestinian homes, so it is very hard to talk about development and about a normal civil society, about normal life, when people are actually denied homes. The human tragedy - the trauma - is really incalculable, but beyond that what we discovered over the years was that this was really the essence of the conflict, because when you deny someone a home and collectively you are denying them a homeland, that is really the essence of the conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. We have to remember that most of the Palestinians whose houses are demolished are refugees. So the message of the demolition policy is "You cannot go home because your home, your village, within Israel is destroyed and gone" or, if it is in the city, "You have Israelis living in your home, but we are also going to deny you homes and housing, the right to live, in your place of refuge." So the message is clear; it is: "Get out. There is no place for you whatsoever." So for us, as Israelis, this is a very important issue, not only on a political level, not only in terms of solidarity with the Palestinians whose homes are demolished, but also it is a form of resistance on our part to the occupation. In other words, we rebuild houses that have been demolished, together with Palestinians. In that way, it is not that the Palestinians need our acknowledgement certainly, but that gives us an opportunity as Israelis to acknowledge that the Palestinians are the native population, that they have every right to live in the country, that we want them to live together, that we refuse to be enemies and that we are, together, resisting in every possible way this whole policy. The Committee Against House Demolitions gets its funding both from donations - we have worldwide campaigns - for rebuilding homes, we also get the funding from the European Union and we have funding from other projects, from other NGOs, such as Christian Aid, for example and other groups. So I think it is one of the important civil society institutions, and because we are a coalition we are able to work a lot with other Israeli groups on all kinds of issues like the Wall, like the closure, like the settlement issues - on all the expressions of the occupation on the ground. If I can just bring one sentence that a friend of mine, Salem Shawamri (?) who is a Palestinian whose house has been demolished four times (we have just built it again for the fifth time), says: "What is good for the Palestinians is good for Israel". I think it is a crucial point to understand that we cannot deal with Palestinian society - certainly under occupation - in a vacuum and in isolation; that Israelis and Palestinians are, in some way, Siamese twins and they both have a stake in the development of each other's societies. I think we have to be careful, especially in development work, not to adopt an either/or attitude - that we are either for this side or for that side - that both sides have the same interest in terms of development, including regional development, not only development in a particular area.

 

Q97  Mr Battle: Could I ask you about the process of demolition? Do you think there is a strategy there? I have visited, but I wondered whether it was to make way for roads and clear people out of the way; or whether it was for other settlements. Is there a definite process, in your view, and has there been significant change in the last two years?

Mr Halper: The first thing to emphasise is that 95 per cent or more of the demolitions have nothing to do with terrorism, nothing to do with security issues; the people have never been charged with any crime - in other words, the popular conception is there is a link into terrorism and it is a deterrent, it is a punishment or whatever. That is not the case. In fact, Israel is claiming, and this is government policy, somewhere around 60 per cent of the occupied territories for itself. Israel denies that it has an occupation at all, so it has done everything in its power to normalise its presence, its rule over what the Israelis call Judea, Samaria and Gaza - even taking the Palestinian Arab names out of the equation. One interesting thing is that because Israel presents itself as a democracy and because it wants to normalise its rule it uses planning, zoning, administration and laws in a very simple way in order to further its political agenda. The British played a crucial role in this. One of the things that Israel did - in other words, they do not demolish a house because you are a Palestinian. No one says "You're a Palestinian, you cannot have a home", but the basis of demolitions is a British mandate plan from 1942 that, essentially, zoned the entire West Bank as agricultural land, even though - you have been there, you know - most of it is not fit for agriculture. It was an attempt on the part of the British at that time, I think, to preserve the landscape, to prevent urban sprawl, to ensure that the villages are built in clusters and that agricultural land and open land is kept free. It was not meant to be a policy against the local population, but the Palestinian population at that time was a quarter of what it is today. Israel came in and, at the end of the 1970s, beginning of the 80s, the Israeli Supreme Court said "We are caught in our own petard; we are a democracy, we have laws, we cannot simply take lands from Palestinians and give them to settlers, you have got to find a way" (it told the army and the government ministries) "to equalise the law, to give us a basis for administering the occupied territories." This British plan was ideal, because it had the force of law, it was a formal law that had never been superseded by any other plan, and it basically froze Palestinian building in 1942. So that until today about 70 per cent of the West Bank is zoned as agricultural land, and that means that even though Palestinians have title deeds to their own properties, lands privately owned, they are not allowed to get building permits; they are not given building permits because it is agricultural. Of course, the point of this whole policy is to force them into what we call today Areas A and B - this 40 per cent of the West Bank and into parts of Gaza - and the same is true of East Jerusalem. The Palestinians are a third of the population of municipal Jerusalem but only have access to 6 per cent of the urban land. So that is also shoving them into these tight kind of ghettos in Jerusalem, certainly, in order to keep the land free for Israeli settlements. So it is a very sophisticated use of law and zoning and planning that seals the occupation, because it allows Israel to then present itself - if I was the Israeli ambassador I would say to you "Well, in London, too, you need a building permit to build. You have your policies, we have our policies, they are not discriminatory". However, of course, the whole basis of the law and of planning is what we call 'partisan' planning, and that is to advance the interests of one group against the interests of another group.

 

Q98  Mr Battle: What sometimes surprises people who visit the Palestinian territories is the notion of refugees and refugee camps, which is a misnomer in this context, is it not? It is not tented cities, people actually own buildings there and urban areas within towns and cities. Could I ask you this question: I have seen urban evictions before on a mass scale, and violent evictions - Korea in 1988 before the Olympic Games, for example - but where do Palestinians who are evicted go? Who provides housing for them? What is the plan for those, and who works with those that are evicted? If you are saying it is 11,000 homes, have they just been absorbed?

Mr Halper: It is 11,000 homes but we have to remember there are thousands of demolition orders outstanding. Demolitions are happening all the time. Two weeks ago 20 houses were demolished in East Jerusalem. The people are left to fend for themselves. In other words, they are considered the offenders because they are the ones that built without a permit. So they are the ones that violated the law. Just to give one example of that, we are now trying to negotiate this fifth house we have built for the Shawamri family to try to preserve the house and let the family live somewhere. Because there has been such a public outcry, including among MPs here, the Israeli authorities are considering a negotiation. What they want to do is demolish the home and then give the family a building permit; the idea is that "If we allow them to continue living in the home we are destroying respect for the law because we would be condoning building without a building permit." So that they are criminalised. This is, really, a point that is important in general. All of Palestinian society is criminalised: you cannot function in Palestinian society without lying, cheating, trying to get around all the rules. In other words, it is impossible to develop a civil society and good citizenship. In direct answer, what happens is the people are left to fend for themselves, they go and live with brothers-in-law, they go and live with parents, they live in tents - the Red Crescent Society provides tents for a while - and basically it creates tremendous overcrowding and very serious housing problems.

 

Q99  Mr Battle: You mentioned the law and the context of the roots in the legal system. Has there been any case at all of any evicted Palestinian, arguing a case for, taking a case for and indeed even getting compensation for, being evicted?

Mr Halper: Not in my experience. The system is pretty watertight. The demolition actually goes back not to 1967 it goes back to 1948, and of course it was a British policy even before 1948 as well, so it goes back a long time. Civil administration is the legal body that administers the occupied territories. It has a whole bank of lawyers and, essentially, they have created a corpus of law that has been approved. The measure is "Will it pass the Supreme Court?" In any kind of step the army and civil administration wants to take the first thing, before it is taken, is "Would this pass the Supreme Court?" It has all been pretty much worked out with the Supreme Court, and the Palestinians really have no grounds on which to appeal - they can appeal and Palestinians do appeal because it buys them time, but they never win in court.

 

Q100  Mr Walter: I am fascinated by this concept that this civil authority assumes powers even in the West Bank. I wonder if I could develop your relationship with the civil authority and, in particular, with CoGAT, as to whether or not you have an effective relationship with CoGAT and whether or not you see it as a means of communication between those who are the occupiers and those who are occupied?

Mr Halper: We are a political organisation. We oppose the occupation, period. Therefore, we do not normally - in some cases, as in the case of this House, a few cases, we do negotiate - mix humanitarian work and political work, which I think is also very important. If we are trying to approach things in a humanitarian way, first of all, there is no end to it and we simply do not have the resources for that, but in addition it dulls the political, because what often happens, and it has happened to us in the past, is that when there is a demolition we come out and we help the family, and it all comes out with the media and public opinion that we are the good guys because we are the ones that came to help the family. The Palestinians turn out to be victims, like victims of an earthquake, and the whole political dimension is lost. So we resist the occupation; we do not normally come in contact with the civil administration. There are organisations - for example, there is a group called VIMCO (?), which is an organisation of Israeli planners and architects for human rights, that help Palestinian families acquire building permits. They help develop master plans for communities. We do not engage in that. Essentially, we say "The occupation has to end"; that is our focus. Any attempt on our part to negotiate with the authorities simply legitimises the occupation, so we simply say that Palestinian civil society will develop housing, and solutions will be reached, only when the occupation ends. As long as the occupation is in existence there is no way to liberalise or humanise the occupation. It simply has to end and it has to always, always, always be exposed for what it is, which is oppression.

Q101  Mr Walter: I am conscious of the time, can I therefore ask you a political question? As an Israeli, do you see Israeli support for the two state solution? Briefly.

Mr Halper: The answer is yes. I do not think the Israelis really care about the solution. What Israelis want is peace and quiet, so whatever works works. If Sharon could, in fact, guarantee peace and quiet to Israelis they would be very happy to let them continue building settlements, or whatever. That has not worked. I think what the Israelis want is the wall. They want separation, they want to cut their losses, they do not care about Palestinians, they want peace and quiet. That is the answer. They do not have a political answer to that question; it is, from their point of view, I think, irrelevant what happens to the Palestinians. "Whatever brings us peace and quiet we will support."

 

Q102  Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr Halper: I also have this I would like to submit to the Committee^[2]. Thank you for inviting me.

Chairman: Mr Halper, thank you for coming and giving evidence.

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: DR ADEL MISK and MRS ROBI DAMELIN, Parents' Circle, examined.

 

Q103  Chris McCafferty: Can I say it is nice to see you both again, and I am pleased that Dr Misk was allowed out of Palestine to come and give evidence here today. I know, because I have spoken with you before when we met in this room, that you are a non-political organisation and you are also one of the very few cross-community organisations that exist in Israel and the occupied territories. So from where I am looking you are a wonderful role model for other organisations, or other Israelis and Palestinians who may want to work for peace and reconciliation and for tolerance in the way that you do so well. I would like to ask you why is it, in your view, there are so few organisations like yours, so few cross-community organisations? Are there big obstacles put in the path of having an organisation such as yours? What can be done to help integrated civil society organisations to flourish in Israel and the occupied territories?

Mrs Damelin: I think, to answer your question about other organisations, if you look at the world in general - in fact if you look at the parties in this very House that we are sitting in - there are pro-Palestinian lobbies, there are pro-Israel friend lobbies and that tends to be the way that people behave in the world in general. I do not think the Israelis or the Palestinians are very different. If you look at the Parents' Circle it is a very unusual organisation. It is made up of 500 families who have all lost a family member. I think it is the basis of being able to forgive and to looking at the future for other children, because parents who have lost children are, really, probably the only people who can understand what it means to send a child off to war. I think that the occupation is not only killing the Palestinians because Israelis do not see the pain and suffering of the Palestinians, but we believe as an organisation that the occupation is ruining the morale and the morals of the Israelis. We must do whatever we can do to stop this occupation and whatever you can do to stop this occupation, if you are interested in Israel in surviving and if you are interested in the Palestinians getting out of the terrible, terrible conditions that they live in. We tend to talk about statistics, and I have listened to everybody here today, but I see the human beings behind the statistics: I see my son, who was a peace worker, I see Adel's father who was killed by the occupiers; I do not see just the statistic. Then when you begin to humanise things you will realise that the Israelis need you more than you even could vaguely understand. It is no good blaming because the Israelis are not going to disappear in a puff of smoke and nor are the Palestinians. So what can you really do except sit around and talk about statistics? It is to try and influence the Israelis to get out of the occupied territories. Our long-term goals are very much towards reconciliation, something like South Africa. We want to have a truth and reconciliation commission because we know that until the Palestinians and the Israelis get together as nations there will never be peace. They can talk about Oslo, they can talk about Geneva, they can do whatever they like, until we all tell the truth and we admit to the crimes from both sides. How can we ever forgive each other? So we work with our telephone line, which is "Hello Peace/Hello Shalom", which we have had over the past year. More than 500,000 people have spoken to each other and we are opening the line from America now because we feel that the media does not give the people enough opportunity to really speak to each other and we hope that we can do the same in Europe, depending on funds.

Dr Misk: Thank you again for giving us this opportunity to talk to all of you about our unique experience. Yes, we are not a political organisation, we are a unique organisation. We have paid the high price in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. As Robi said, and all of us agree, the main problem for all of us is the occupation of the territory. When we start to work together as Palestinians and Israeli we believe strongly that we have the same blood and the same pain and the same future. In the last year a group of Palestinians went to a medical centre in the West of Jerusalem and donated blood to the Israeli parts as a symbolic issue. On the same day an Israeli group of Parents' Circle Forum Families went to Ramallah and donated blood to the Palestinian hospitals in Ramallah and met General Arafat on the same day. This example is to see and to show for all of us that Palestinian and Israeli, we have the same blood and the same pain and the same future for all of us. The peace issue and the security, what Israel is looking for, I think is the same thing for the Palestinian operation and for the Palestinian Authority. Since then we started to have another programme, like education. We believe strongly in education and to prepare the future generation, to prepare the future leaders; we did not succeed to convince our leaders to reach peace and to talk to each other. Me and Robi and tens and hundreds of persons like us we are succeeding to talk about our pain and about our suffering and about our future, but I am so sorry now we did not succeed to convince our leaders to talk together and to sit down to reach this peace. As we start to convince and to work hard with the next generation, the children and with the teenagers, we start to make a lecture in high school, initially in Israeli high schools and then later on in the Palestinian high schools. We believe that these young persons between 16 and 17 years old, they will be the problem in the next day. We show that the Israeli teenager, 16 and 17, was going to military service the next day and will be in contact with the Palestinian reality. We have made more than 1,400 lectures in Israeli high schools, and Palestinian we start this year. During the last year we have made another project to prepare the children of both sides. We made it a summer camp between the Israeli and Palestinian children, at the age of 9 to 14 years. We give the possibility to these children, about 20 from both sides, to live together for more than a week. We succeed and we show how it is so important to prepare this generation for the next future and for peace and reconciliation. Thank you.

 

Q104  Chris McCafferty: You have half-answered my next question, which was: do you think that cross-community education is effective? Well, clearly, you do because you would not be doing it otherwise. I am sure everyone in this room would agree with you that hatred is the cause or, certainly, exacerbated by ignorance.

Mrs Damelin: The opportunity that an Israeli child gets when he meets a Palestinian bereaved parent, he may never have met a Palestinian in his life. This cut-off of both populations creates fear, and the fear is what creates all this violence. I can tell you from a personal experience that I was in Italy and I went to talk at a peace conference and they did not want me to talk because I was an Israeli. Yes, it is quite difficult to be an Israeli in Europe now. A very wonderful woman from Ramallah got up and told them that they needed to let me talk. So think of the subservity (?) that a Palestinian from Ramallah has to tell the Europeans to let an Israeli talk. I am just giving you this as an example of judging without knowing, and that is what is happening in Israel and the Palestinian state.

 

Q105  Chris McCafferty: Can I ask you what feedback you have had from the seminars that you have instigated, particularly the work in the schools? I am interested in the young people. What kind of feedback are you getting from what you are telling them, what you are talking about? What is the response to that education?

Dr Misk: Usually we adopt a system. Initially we send an Israeli person to talk with the Israeli schools and later on we commit to make the lecture and come in, Israeli and Palestinian person, to talk together, and to talk about ourselves, to talk about our pain and to talk about our history. Initially we have many reactions. Some of them refuse this kind of co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians. Unbelievable to see persons who have lost families, obvious to hate each other, obvious to kill each other, to see each other, to go together and talk in the same language about our pain and our history; we have many, many positive reactions. Many of them ask how they can help, how they can reach us, how they can work for us even. This is the reaction that we have.

 

Q106  Chris McCafferty: So you feel that by, particularly, working with young people you can help create a better environment, better thinking and a better knowledge of each other's position and, hopefully, to combat incitement perhaps?

Mrs Damelin: It is really to create a dialogue, and that is the telephone line. It is much more than that because it has to be very long-term, and we are working with the transitional justice, Dr Alex Boraine, who created the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa. It is obviously not the same situation because we are not talking about a government-backed organisation, but we want to prepare a framework, and I think that no other group could be more appropriate to spearhead something like this. We do not have the academic qualifications but we certainly do have the example to give. That is where we are heading.

 

Q107  Chris McCafferty: I know you are non-politicos and my colleague has already asked our resident politico this question, so I want to ask it of you from the non-political perspective. We visited the wall, we have seen what it is doing, we know it is reducing the occupied territories into, really, several small steins (?), if you like. Given that is the current situation, I would like to know your view as non-political people. What is your view of the two state solution? What is your perception of current Israeli-Palestinian thinking on the two state solution? The third point of that is, would the truth and reconciliation procedure that you envisage be before or after a two state solution? When do you see that happening?

Mrs Damelin: That is a dream.

 

Q108  Chris McCafferty: The two state solution is a dream?

Mrs Damelin: No.

 

Q109  Chris McCafferty: The truth and reconciliation?

Mrs Damelin: I think the two state solution will happen soon, hopefully, because not Israel and not Palestine can sustain the situation as is. The human suffering of the Palestinians, I think, is very hard for anybody to conceive of. The more I meet Palestinians the more I realise how dreadful their daily life is. This gentlemen over here needs to get to a hospital in Ramallah and it can take him three hours. I can get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 40 minutes. The difference in the little boy who cannot see his father because he lives in the West Bank and the father does not have permission to come to East Jerusalem. Those are little things, but those are the people behind the statistics. This cannot go on. The children of the settlers, of the occupiers, in my opinion, are abused children, and if I could do anything to help them get out of there I would so. Part of our organisation now, we are 13 mothers and we are working to have a dialogue with the mothers in the occupied territories to try to get them out, because they are the cause of the death of my children and many other children. My child did not die for Israel, my child died to protect a cause that he did not believe in.

 

Q110  Chris McCafferty: That is very hard.

Dr Misk: The two state solution may be a dream but if you are looking at what is happening on the ground, who is visiting the occupied territories and the continuity of return to Palestinian, it gives the idea that it is so impossible to create a Palestinian state on the ground. I believe that the security and the development of the Israeli state is unrelinquished (?), but the creation of a Palestinian state and the security and the development, even for a Palestinian population who was looking at fighting for many years - I am so sorry that the Palestinian Authority and Palestinians fighting and waiting to create a Palestinian state, suddenly in 2000 transformed to a terrorist. We do not like to be a terrorist, this kind of stigma for the Palestinian movement for liberation to transform to a movement of terrorism. The Palestinian population, they are looking to freedom and to create a Palestinian state behind the Israeli state, and to live together. Later on we can make reconciliation and talk about this kind of reconciliation between two states.

Chairman: Thank you very much for coming.

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: DR SHIMON T SAMUELS, Director for International Liaison, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and MS ILKA SCHRÖDER, Member of the European Parliament, examined.

 

Q111  Chairman: Dr Samuels, I understand you would like to make some introductory remarks. You are very welcome to do that, provided they are no more than three or four minutes.

Dr Samuels: Thank you, Mr Chairman. First, I would like to express my sympathy and compliments to the previous two speakers. We feel their pain but their representation remains, I believe, in harmony until it becomes politicised. Our concern here is with the political and with the economic, and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has supported Ms Ilka Schröder's campaign in the European Parliament for transparency. If you will recall, Mr Chairman, I wrote to you just before the first of these sessions to say that we were so hopeful that, despite the fact that campaigns for transparency were blocked in the European Parliament, this initiative would review all of the issues that were behind the scenes in terms of misappropriation charges of EU funding - the British taxpayers' contribution to that EU funding - and moneys that may have been creamed off for terrorism, for incitement for hate and for personal enrichment. When we saw your agenda and the agenda items we were very dismayed - checkpoints, walls of separation, settlement, etc. Indeed, the first session that we attended, and this one, made us wonder whether you were really interested in the question of irregularities.

 

Q112  Chairman: Dr Samuels, we were interested in what you had to say, otherwise you would not be sitting there giving evidence. If all you are going to do is berate the Committee for the evidence we have taken or the evidence we have not taken, it does not seem to be a very good way to start winning friends on this Committee.

Dr Samuels: I would like to redress the balance of this agenda, with the 8 per cent of the time of these sessions, by pointing out that we believe - and we have documents to prove - that moneys provided by the United Kingdom through the EU were misappropriated by the Palestinian Authority. We are not suggesting that the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people do not deserve to be covered by all types of programmes, not necessarily through the PA or through UNWRA, (some of the direct award programmes are indeed excellent) but we are saying there has to be some kind of accountability. That accountability requires change. The issues that I would like to raise or have raised in the session are the projects funded by the EU, such as Palestine Television, which is broadcasting hate, which is broadcasting anti-Semitism and that is blown back through satellite and through the internet to Western Europe where it is increasingly exacerbating the relationships between the Muslim and the Jewish community (particularly in France where I work); music videos for teenagers, for example, replete with hate, showing the Jews as cold-blooded murderers; EU-funded school texts and school teachers who promote hate and the denial of Israel and denial of the Holocaust; EU-funded websites - and I can point to them in some of the documents that I would like to make as a submission to this Committee. I think Ms Ilka Schröder, as an MEP, is better endowed than me to tell you about that campaign.

 

Q113  Chairman: I have some questions and then if, at the end, you feel that there is any point that my questions have not covered we will deal with them. During our recent visit we met a member of Knesset who stressed the importance of a future Palestinian state within the occupied territories being a stable and prosperous neighbour for Israel. I just wondered whether that was a view that you shared, and how do you see development assistance working to ensure that a future Palestine is a good neighbour rather than a failing state?

Dr Samuels: First, in the sessions you have had, I think all of the speakers - whether they were from the European Commission or governmental or NGOs - all agreed that the need is truly great. I think it was the DFID representative who said that an unprecedented provision of $315 per capita of the Palestinian population had not stopped poverty tripling. The question is, is there not a contradiction there? Our concern is: where is the money going which is being creamed off? In answer to your question I believe that if the humanitarian aid were funnelled and monitored (and possibly it would be the role of this Committee to demand that the EU sets up monitoring agencies or instruments against the misuse of these funds and these projects) then I believe that certainly this would help to ensure a stable Palestinian economy. In the mean time, the incitement that we see on, as I have I mentioned, television and, I have mentioned, the schools - projects which are funded by the EU - do not help in settling the relationship to have an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel; the opposite, because any intergovernmental peace agreement has to be underpinned by popular will. There does not seem to be a popular will at this point, and I think that the last three years of the incitement that we have seen has poisoned the well of Palestinian thinking.

 

Q114  Chairman: During our visit we heard from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they had been impressed with the reforms in the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Finance. Indeed, I think everyone we met seemed to be pretty impressed by the new Palestinian Authority Minister of Finance. Certainly he took us through what he is trying to do to ensure accountability and transparency. Are your concerns on-going concerns, or are they primarily historic concerns about what has happened before? I would just like to get some perspective on that. Do you feel that the PA is seeking to address the issue of accountability and transparency? What is your view?

Dr Samuels: I think you have to follow the paper trail. The compartmentalisation and double reporting that we have documented shows that the minister to which you are referring certainly has attempted and, with some success, managed to create some type of accounting system, but in a very narrow area. That is why Israel has now paid and is paying the back taxes that were due to the Palestinian Authority because the monitoring of those taxes is very different from, for example, that moneys that are coming from the EU. The 10 million euros per month which is coming through the EU is, in fact, creamed off at various levels. We have documents which show that only 60 per cent of the figure mentioned for salaries are paid; 40 per cent is creamed off. The 60 per cent that is paid is paid at an advantageous exchange rate; as the salaries are paid in shekels they are exchanged at 3.7 to the dollar whereas the true figure is 4.45. That provides a 20 per cent edge for the PA. The question is, where is that 20 per cent going? In addition, 1.5 per cent of the salaries paid, in many cases, is taken off for Fatah membership. In fact, only two nights ago, the BBC - which is certainly not uncritical of Israel - showed in The Correspondent programme on BBC2 the relationship between Fatah and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is on the EU's list of terrorist organisations for its claims of suicide bombing. If you follow the paper trail I think it is certainly an on-going issue, it is not historical, and it is extremely disconcerting.

 

Q115  Chairman: I do not want to put words into your mouth, but is what you are saying that the Minister of Finance in the Palestinian Authority is only controlling part of the budget that is going to the PA or that he is dealing with different income streams in a different way?

Dr Samuels: I think it comes to the same thing. He is dealing with different income streams of those that have been allotted to him. There was a poll - it may not have been a scientific one - and some 70 per cent of the West Bank at one point over a year ago claimed that the PA was corrupt. This gentleman was brought in ----

 

Q116  Chairman: What I am trying to understand from all your evidence is this: is what you are saying that the Palestinian Minister of Finance is being accountable and transparent with some sums of money it receives ----?

Dr Samuels: Yes.

 

Q117  Chairman: ---- but just not the money it gets from the European Union?

Dr Samuels: Not just "not just the money from the European Union" but some of the moneys - certainly any Israeli back taxes and some of the moneys, for example, through USAID, which is not going directly to the PA but is going to earmarked projects - that go through his control. Therefore, he is able to provide transparency. The problem is the other funds, the lion's share of the funds. I think it would be the mandate of this Committee to ask the question and to press the European Union, the European Parliament, to make that necessary investigation.

 

Q118  Mr Battle: Could I ask, perhaps from a different angle? Maybe I would be tempted to question the money from this point of view: in any other situation where there is an occupation, for whatever reason, the occupying power pays the cost of that occupation, perhaps, in terms of health care, education, services and infrastructure. Would you support total withdrawal of aid and Israel to pay the bill for occupation?

Dr Samuels: At one point, possibly, before the violence and the Intifada, while there were negotiations towards settlement (which were rejected by the Palestinian side) that might have been a reality. Today, as every step is beset by conflict I do not think that is a reality. Nobody is suggesting that the structures that are there should be dissolved. I am not suggesting that the Palestinian population do not require it, though they are possibly the most subsidised per capita of any population in the third world; what I am suggesting is that the moneys which ostensibly are sent to the Palestinian population arrive to their target, which is the needy people, and not $100,000 a month to the First Lady, Suha Arafat and her daughter in Paris, or $50,000 , as we have been shown in the BBC programme, to line the coffers of Mr Arafat. Something is wrong where there is a system based upon crime and corruption.

 

Q119  Chairman: Given that part of the complaint appears to be EU development money, what have colleagues been doing in the European Parliament to question Poul Nielson and Chris Patten about this?

Ms Schröder: The question starts a bit earlier because as we probably all know it is the duty of Israel to provide the Palestinian Authority with some custom duties that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Israel stopped to do that late 2000 after the Intifada began and gave reasons for this breaking of an international agreement. Israel said it was afraid that this money would be used for anti-Semitic terror activities. What happened was the EU was already at the time the provider of a lot of money that went to the PA and did not check whether its own money would be used properly but jumped into the financial gap and provided exactly the money that Israel stopped to pay to the Palestinians. To put it very clearly, Israel was afraid of being attacked from the Palestinian side, stopped to pay the money that it was obliged to pay to the PA and then the EU jumped into this gap. From June 2000 onwards until the beginning of 2003 it paid 10 million euro monthly. In 2002 the IDF presented a vast amount of material that it found in the territories. Please do not tell me it is a one-sided statement. It might be or it might not be - we need to check the figures because there seems to be only one institution that seems to have the interests of checking what happens to the PA money. But the argument is not refuted by simply quoting the source. I do not know if you have seen some statements, it sounds like some of you have not, but it provided exactly the proof that they have been created off-budget, that can be used for any action because you do not need to legitimise it - for example, with the current exchange rate, with an exaggerated amount of employees that supposedly were paid - and you even had documents in here that proved that PA officials that were paid by the PA to do a normal administrative job were part of terrorist organisations, and those are not singular cases. It happens often. So if we talk about suffering and victims here it is very sad to say that the bullets which shot many of those people are financed by the EU.

 

Q120  Chairman: You are a Member of the European Parliament so you have the opportunity of seeing people like Chris Patten and Poul Nielson a bit more frequently than we do. They do come and give evidence, indeed Pascal Lamy was here only a couple of weeks ago giving evidence on the WTO. My question, really, was what has been the responses to your questioning of the European Parliament? What response have you had from Chris Patten and Poul Nielson to the evidence which you have put?

Ms Schröder: I cannot say that I was particularly satisfied by the response since, for example, on the forcefully deducted 1.5-2 per cent of the salaries for Fatah membership fee, Chris Patten answered that this would be a normal procedure within Europe, too, for example a forced membership for a trade union. Now, you compare a membership fee to a trade union to a Fatah membership fee, which has (as Shimon Samuels has pointed out) a clear link to terrorist organisations and takes pride in anti-Semitic action. So this is the comparison he made and, thereby, he is saying "Everything is fine, we have the same kind of procedure over here too." For me this just shows how little he understands about the situation and about the anti-Semitic part of the action. The currency exchange rates, he answered only that it was wrong because the EU would not pay in dollars but in euro, but we did not make the point between euro or dollar, we said that whatever currency it would be, whether US dollar or euro, it is exchanged into shekels, and here we have the problem. On that one he never answered, he never said anything on that. Then there is one more important point on the IMF control. Christopher Patten and people who would stick to the EU policy, they would all say "There is a perfect control mechanism by the International Monetary Fund. What do we need to worry about?" The International Monetary Fund itself says it has no proper control of where exactly the money from the PA is going. This is a statement by the IMF on the internet, you can get it from the IMF and we never got an answer from the EU Commission itself or Mr Patten on how he would react to that one - that there is no control. So I am afraid that, after all those hearings that have happened in Parliament and after the illegal stopping of having an inquiry happening on this issue, the problems stand as they were a year ago and two years ago.

 

Q121  Chairman: How do you think such funds should be monitored?

Ms Schröder: I think the problem cannot be seen just in an administrative way, because all the problems that I described to you and the answers that I put forward that came from the Commission, just very clearly show that the political message is "We don't care. The PA can do whatever it wants, we will cover up everything. We will make an argument that doesn't fit, but we will make sure that it's OK whatever you do with the money." You have so many control mechanisms, you have so much development aid, and there is so much experience with that. It is very easy to make, for example, a very concrete help. You can give out cans with food, you can give out material, if you want to make sure that this is not misused for terrorist actions against Israel. Even here you have a problem, and I cannot tell you how to solve it if the EU policy towards the PA and its chairperson goes on like that. You have cans that were given to the PA and it was found out that they were sold by PA officials. So this is just a very simple case of corruption. I cannot say how to resolve that problem. As long as the PA continues its policy it started in 2000, when it decided to start a so-called intifada, which was not a spontaneous up-rising by some poor Palestinians - sure they are - but it was planned by the PA, financed by the PA, and there is a statement by the Information Minister from the PA and it is a clear statement from the PA side, it does not want to solve the situation peacefully. In that situation I cannot answer your question, properly because as long as this political will stands you will probably not find a way to give the money to the Palestinians they deserve which really comes out where it is needed as humanitarian aid.

 

Q122  Chairman: Unless I misunderstand you, the logic of that approach is this, is it not, if money is not given to the Palestinian Authority and if, taking Dr Samuels' answer to my colleague John Battle's question, the Government of Israel do not see a responsibility to provide funds for those in the Occupied Territories, then we are going to have a situation where the international community, ie not the Government of Israel, not the Palestinian Authority, in some way are going to have to take responsible for all the service provision of people in the Occupied Territories. Is that what you are suggesting?

Ms Schröder: I am suggesting that we need to see where the problem starts. I cannot see at the moment the political will from the Palestinian side to see what Israel is about. Israel is the refuge to people who are perceived as Jews or define themselves as Jews. After the Holocaust happened, after the Shoah happened, anti-Semitism still went on worldwide, and after the Shoah anti-Semitism wherever it is does mean a threat to every single Jew or any person perceived as a Jew, an extermination threat, therefore Israel is needed as the last refuge for those people. I can see unfortunately - and I agree with many people who have testified before - that there is a lot of intimidation of terrorists within the Palestinian Authorities so probably there is not a chance for people who would like to talk about anti-Semitism in the Palestinian Territories to point it out. The situation is that you have a society incited by anti-Semitism, it is financed by different EU countries, it is spread amongst the camps and the UN institution itself says we have a huge problem here. Usually terrorists are kept out of those camps which are just there for humanitarian purposes.

 

Q123  Chairman: I do not think there is a single member of this House, on any side of the House, who is anything other than supportive of Israel's right to exist as a state. After all, it was the United Kingdom in 1948 which was one of those in the United Nations which led for Israel's recognition as a state. Let us set that aside, that is not an issue which is an issue for debate in this House. What we have, and perhaps I can ask my question, is a large number of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, they have to be fed, they have to be educated, they need medical support, they need a whole number of provisions and services. As I understand it from Dr Samuels, and that would appear to be the case from elsewhere as well, the Government of Israel notwithstanding they are the occupying power, do not see it as a responsibility to finance that service provision, so either those funds have to go through the Palestinian Authority, or if they do not go through the Palestinian Authority it means the international community taking the responsibility of providing those services direct through some other mechanism. So I just want to be clear, is your position that no money should go to the Palestinian Authority, and if so it must logically follow you are arguing for the international community to fund some other mechanism to look after the Palestinian people?

Ms Schröder: I am not willing to give administrative advice how to finance the Palestinian side as long as it has had aid by people and organisations whose aim is to hurt Israel as much as possible, who have so much anti-Semitism among them and who spread anti-Semitism as their ideology, and whose aim is to destroy Israel as a state or as a Jewish state. How can I advise you to finance those people? I said I would be the happiest person, as probably many other people here, to give the Palestinians the humanitarian aid they deserve. What would you do if you saw all this humanitarian aid goes against Israel?

 

Q124  Chairman: I want to understand the answer to my question. The answer to my question is that you do not believe any humanitarian or development aid should go to the Palestinian Authority? It is a simple yes or no.

Ms Schröder: As long as it has had aid to a person like Arafat - and we have talked about what he finances ----

 

Q125  Chairman: So the answer is no development or humanitarian aid should go to the Palestinian Authority. Okay. I just want to understand then what mechanism you see the international community adopting? We have a duty of care as part of the international community to the people in the Occupied Territories, just as we have to other people elsewhere. The levels of malnutrition in Gaza and elsewhere are as bad as they are in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. How do you see that humanitarian aid being delivered? Who do you see delivering it?

Ms Schröder: The first thing which needs to happen is that any organisation or institution which is commissioned to distribute this aid is very clearly making statements and proving that they are not taking any action against Israel or against the people who deserve to belong to the state. That of course needs to be supervised. There are thousands of mechanisms to control that, they are not applied and that is not an administrational problem, but a political decision.

 

Q126  Chairman: Can I move on to another matter. One of the criticisms made of the Palestinian Authority is that they are doing insufficient to play a role in fighting terrorism. I would welcome Dr Samuels' help on this. Throughout the West Bank we saw police stations which had been demolished and we heard evidence it was actually impossible for any Palestinian police force to operate effectively as we would understand a police force operating within the Palestinian territory. Unless the solution is from your perspective that the Israeli defence forces police the whole Palestinian Occupied Territories, how do you see the Palestinian people themselves being able to police themselves?

Dr Samuels: I think you have to look at capability as opposed to will. We have seen that when Mr Arafat wants to close the tap or control some of his extremists, he is well able to do so. I do not think it is a question of demolishing police stations. It is a question of controlling the source of funds. We have a document here which is in the original Arabic and in translation which shows the money going at 2 shekels per Kalashnikov bullet, how many bullets being ordered. You may be aware of the civil suit which is being filed in Tel Aviv District Court against the EU for damages for a British-born subject of Israel, Stephen Bloomberg. His family was attacked while he was driving, by EU-salaried police officials. He and his 14 year-old daughter are bound in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. His pregnant wife was killed. I am sure the "Parents' Circle" who are here must know the family case very well. Bloomberg was quoted as saying, "My parents in London are paying taxes which go partly to the EU and that money has contributed to the murder of my wife. European taxpayers should know their money is used to blow up buses and cafes and to murder innocent civilians." I think that is the main question. The question here is, how do you control the monies which are being paid through the EU which are creamed off to pay for those bullets?

 

Q127  Chairman: I asked that question to Ms Schroder a second ago, how are you suggesting the money should be monitored, and I think the answer I got from her was that we should be giving no money at all to the Palestinian Authority. That was her answer. If you have a different answer in fairness you should be allowed to put it. How do you think we should be monitoring money which should be given to the Palestinian Authority?

Dr Samuels: It is not my job to tell the European Union how to monitor. They have better background and experience of doing that. However, certainly some of the NGOs involved have competent programmes. They are also, I am sure, being monitored by the EU - one hopes so - although one in particular which is called Law creamed off 40 per cent - 4 million dollars of 10 million dollars - they received from the EU. We have documents on that here in what I want to submit to you. Monies can be more carefully monitored to see they get to their target.

Chairman: It is obviously important in a matter of confidence that everyone has confidence the money is going where it should be going, so I would have thought you might have given some thought as to how you would have confidence, or what monitoring systems you might have confidence in, that the money is going to the destination it is intended for.

 

Q128  Mr Khabra: You have presented your own views and to me it looks as if it is a very grim picture with no prospect of any peace between Israel and Palestine. You mentioned money being used for corruption, being used to support terrorism, the training of terrorists, etcetera. My personal view is that even if what you said is true, there are no controls over that, nobody on the EU is even monitoring it. Suppose all that happens, that there is control over that money, that money is being properly used by the PA and it does not get into the hands of the people who are terrorists and who want to sabotage the peace process and want to kill, can I ask you, without that money, do you think terrorism will finish? Do you not consider that Hamas, which is an organisation which is getting more popular day by day, and Islamic Jihad, will be getting money from other sources? There are a lot of other sources they can get money from to continue or organise terrorism and they have a philosophy, and probably you understand what that philosophy is all about, that they would like to have political power and that is a very grim situation. Do you not think Israel should take into consideration that it is proper, reasonable and logical that the Palestinian Authority should be helped to actually deal with the internal situation? What happens, if there is occupation, check-points, other restrictions on movements, is that Hamas becomes stronger and stronger and the Palestinian Authority may be reduced to nothing at all. What is going to happen then? I want to ask this question.

Dr Samuels: Mr Khabra, I agree with you, the situation is very grim but terror did not begin with this intifada. Palestinian terror began with the creation of the PLO in 1964 which was three years before these territories fell into the hands of Israel as a result of aggression against Israel. Until that time they were in the hands of Jordan and Egypt and yet terror was designed against Israel with the creation of the PLO. Hamas has been launching terror, yes, you are right, that has to be controlled, and money will continue to get to such organisations from such sources as Iran and possibly other Arab countries. What we are saying here is that the EU has no right to see that money is getting to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or to Hamas. This is what we say to the EU, and your Committee because of the nature of its discussions is discussing with the EU. It is vitally important that that money be snuffed out before it gets there. We have seen the demonstrations in this past week on television of women asking for their money from Hamas which is not getting through any more because Mr Arafat got the point, this is not good for his public image. So if it is not good for his public image that the money does not get to Hamas at this moment, in that case something is working. What we suggest is whatever is working is a formula which has to be much more broadly effective.

 

Q129  Chairman: I must declare a couple of interests in the run up to this. One of my family was one of the first of the Friends Ambulance Corps into Belsen. My tutor at university, because I practised law, was one of the junior counsel who prosecuted at Nuremberg, and indeed my predecessor head of chambers is now prosecuting war crimes in Sierra Leone. Many of the prosecutions at Nuremberg were brought because of breaches against international humanitarian law, and the ability of the Friends Ambulance Service, the Red Cross and others, to operate and those prosecutions were brought about because of the existence of the Geneva Conventions. As I understand it, your organisation is a human rights organisation and I wondered what steps you take as a human rights organisation to ensure that the Fourth Geneva Convention is applied fairly, fully and properly in Occupied Territories?

Dr Samuels: I consider the Fourth Geneva Convention is certainly valid for every case of occupation. It is perhaps mystifying it was only convened by the Swiss Government in the case of Israel. It has never been convened in all the years since 1949 in regard to the Chinese occupation of Tibet or any other occupation. What we find here is a single-country-bashing campaign against Israel. Unfortunately this is an atmosphere which I experienced in the United Nations Human Rights Commission where Israel is in the dock and there is one item on the agenda, Item 8, only against Israel, and Item 9 against all other issues of human rights violations. So when the issue becomes a question of universal concern and not just a cover for countries, particularly despotic, totalitarian states in the UN, who use the bashing of Israel in order to cover up their own human rights violations, then in that case your question would be highly justified.

Ms Schröder: Considering there was a war against Yugoslavia in 1999, no matter what opinion you had on that one, it was true Yugoslavia was not a threat to any western country, nobody even dared to think Milosevic would attack any other country because he did not have the military possibilities for that. NATO went in with air strikes which meant minimum victims on your side, maximum civilians on the other side, and we have lots of cases now against different NATO states. This was something which was very obviously human rights violations but the UN was not even part of it, and now it is Germany and France who are making a big row about Iraq because it was not dealt with by a UN Resolution but they took part in Kosovo. Now you take the Jenin case and what happened there. There was a demand by the Israeli Government as always to the PA to look for their terrorists, especially the ones in official positions, they gave them lists to check. What happens to those people? There are a lot of connections between the PA and anti-Semitism terrorism so nothing will happen. What does Israel do? Again, abstracting from your position, whether it was right or wrong, the Israeli defence forces went into Jenin, they took ground forces because they did not want air strikes which they could have done because they wanted minimum civilian victims on the other side, and they did exactly the contrary to NATO. I am not a military expert and I never want to be but if you take into account how Kosovo was evaluated, how Jenin was evaluated, I cannot see that the Middle East and Israel in particular are different. The decision is to see Israel as the perpetrator and the Palestinians will always be the victims once you have taken this decision, and you can see that very clearly if you compare the situation with so many others. This is the official EU policy and you can see what comes out of it. We have had opinion polls two weeks ago which came out in the European Union and more than 50 per cent of the European population believe that Israel is the main problem for world peace. This is what you do when you have a blind, one-sided, pro-Palestinian position from the EU which does not take into account any anti-Semitic actions. This is what you get out of it.

 

Q130  Chairman: In fairness that was not my question but let me try it another way. From my perspective, and I would not speak for other colleagues, I do not see any evidence of a peace process at the present time. The Prime Minister of Israel has made it clear he is not going to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority whilst Arafat is heading it or whilst anyone who is talking to Arafat from the Palestinian Authority is involved, so we almost certainly are going to have a long period of time of occupiers and occupied, because however one looks at it, using words as neutrally as possible, the Israeli defence forces are occupying the West Bank and Gaza. I am interested as a lawyer in how that situation in international law is dealt with, and it seems to me international law has dealt with it by the Geneva Conventions - in civilised nations that is how it is done. I cannot see and I do not understand why a human rights organisation would not wish to see the Geneva Conventions applied in that occupation as anywhere else. I put that question again to see if I get any different answer.

Ms Schröder: If it was like "anywhere else" everybody would agree, but as you can see it does not apply.

 

Q131  Chairman: So you are saying the Geneva Convention should not be applied?

Ms Schröder: I am saying that everything you refer to as international law is always applied in a very different way to Israel than any other nations.

 

Q132  Chairman: Are you saying international law should not be applied in the Occupied Territories?

Ms Schröder: I think you do not want to understand, I made a very clear statement, if it was a world where you did not have very specific actions taken against Israel - and I explained before what I think is so specific against that country because I do not think everybody has understood that well. I see at the same time the human rights violations in Israel sanctioned, but many other much worse violations elsewhere are not. So should I not wonder why they are applied in Israel but not in many other places?

 

Q133  Chairman: At the present moment there are war crime trials going on, the international community is taking action against those accused of war crimes in Sierra Leone, in Rwanda, in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, these are all areas where the international community is taking action. Anyway, you have given your answer and that will have to stand on the record.

Ms Schröder: This is a very good example, this trial against Milosevic, because if you look at the civilian victims killed by the NATO-led war against Yugoslavia, in the logic of the court there should be many other people in front of it who will never have to justify their actions in front of any court.

Dr Samuels: May I ask you a question?

 

Q134  Chairman: Of course.

Dr Samuels: I think your use of the word "occupation" requires definition. The Geneva Convention, as far as I remember, was never raised in terms of the Jordanian and Egyptian occupation of these territories you are discussing today. Israel unilaterally withdrew from occupied territory of Lebanon and yet the war on the Lebanese border continues with the claim that Israel is in fact still occupying the Shaba Farms, which is in fact Syrian and not Lebanese. The definition of occupation, where an occupation begins, where it ends, is it conceivable do you believe, Mr Baldry, that were Israel to unilaterally to leave these territories and just exist on the other side of the fence - even if that fence were on the green line - all the claims against Israel would end? Would there not be claims for Tel Aviv, for Haifa, for Jaffa? Do you not believe this would be a continuing process because this is not a war just for the West Bank and Gaza?

 

Q135  Chairman: The difficulty is this, is it not, international law generally hates a vacuum. One cannot have people without citizenship, without rights, without remedies. For a long time the international community has been striving through the peace process, through the road map, through the quartet, to find a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. There will come a point, if that does not work, where the international community is going to say that every citizen, every person, every individual who is within the boundaries of the state of Israel is de jure a citizen of Israel. One cannot have a situation where there are large numbers of people within one state who are effectively stateless. So if the two-state solution cannot be found to work then international law is going to say de jure and de facto there is a single state?

Dr Samuels: Are you asking me?

 

Q136  Chairman: I am putting it to you as a question. There was a question mark at the end of that statement.

Dr Samuels: I personally and not institutionally, and not in any way beyond myself, do believe in a two state solution. I believe it is inevitable and it has to happen in order to allow both communities to divorce. I think all of the plans for a new Middle East and the illusions of functional interdependence between these two peoples have been disappointed over these past few years and I do not see any possibility of doing that without division. I think that separation should allow both to develop for themselves. That does not mean to say that when you talk about occupation the claims will come to an end, I am certain they will not. I am certain that even with the most benign administration in this state of Palestine, no matter what its dimensions or where its borders will be, it will not be enough for the Palestine programme of some elements in that country. Coming back to this question of the Geneva Convention, the Geneva Convention applies to civilians but unfortunately within these territories the acts of violence and terror are committed by ostensible civilians, they may not be wearing uniforms, but they are terrorists and therefore the whole thing has to be seen within a prism of sensitivity to the victims of terror. I come back to the responsibility of your Committee, Sir, in its role of providing guidance to the EU in the spending of funds to see those two shekels being paid out for Kalashnikov bullets to kill British citizens living in Israel.

Chairman: Thank you. Thank you for coming and giving evidence, and thank you, Ms Schröder, for coming from the European Parliament.