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Those small steps towards peace and wider regional stability and prosperity were not in the interests of terrorist organisations, which thrive on chaos and fear. Their power derives from derailing negotiations and causing turbulence and violence.
I have no doubt that Hezbollah kidnapped the Israeli soldier in a deliberate attempt to stop any progress in the peace process, and to escalate violence and so increase and consolidate its power. In so doing, it has taken the world’s attention away from Iran’s attempts to secure nuclear weapons—a prospect that would have immensely harmful repercussions for the stability of the wider regional and global theatres. We cannot conclude that Iran directly ordered the attacks and kidnappings against Israeli targets—that would bea crude assessment—but there is a strong and co-ordinated web of influence between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, and that relationship has been nurtured over the past few decades.
Hezbollah was created by the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war, and since then it has received training and weaponry and technical expertise from Tehran. Iran is Hezbollah’s main sponsor, donating an average of $100 million to $200 million a year. As was said earlier, Hezbollah has deliberately entwined itself into civilian life in Lebanon. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) pointed out, missiles and military equipment are stored in densely populated areas.
That is the context of the current crisis. Israel has a wish—a legitimate one, in my opinion—to try to destroy Hezbollah’s military capability to minimise the risks to its citizens and to mitigate, as much as possible, the existential threat to itself. Israel also has a right, which I do not think anybody in the House or elsewhere could dispute, to defend its borders. However, that task is made immeasurably more difficult by the deliberate intention of Hezbollah to intertwine its military capability into civilian life in Lebanon. This tactic is cowardly, but I urge restraint on Israel.
The loss of life, the injury and the impact upon the basic humanitarian situation in Lebanon have been truly horrendous. Israel must show restraint and try to ensure that its legitimate aim of destroying the military wing of Hezbollah does not coincide with or cause the destruction of the infrastructure of normal Lebanese life. Such a move would help breed even more of a culture of hatred and disaffection in the region, and would result in the evaporation of support from actors such as the G8 and Saudi Arabia.
Diplomatic
pressure for a ceasefire and thereafter a negotiated two-state
structure are the only solutions,
both in the short term and taking a longer perspective. I fully support
the Government in their stance on the matter and their ability to try
and get all parties to the negotiating table, but I accept that
influence on Hezbollah is limited. The world must be firm that any of
those short green shoots of peace which we have seen in recent months
in the region are not trampled upon and destroyed for ever by extremist
and aggressive states and terrorist
organisations.
4.56 pm
Mr. James Arbuthnot (North-East Hampshire) (Con): I shall do my best to keep to three minutes. I entirely agree with what the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright) said and I do not wish to repeat it. I thought it was a fine speech.
I declare my interest. I am the chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel. This will not be a balanced speech because I do not think I should take the time to balance it as I would otherwise like. When hostages are taken and still held, I find it difficult to be balanced. The Foreign Secretary was absolutely right in saying that the crisis could be brought speedily to an end by the hostages being released and by the firing of the rockets being stopped.
I shall make four points. First, some people say that the occupation by the Israelis is the problem. Well, if that were the case, when Israel withdrew from Gaza they could have expected some benefit from it, but instead what they got was a rain of rockets coming out of Gaza. That withdrawal from Gaza was heavily objected to by many people in Israel, and now the reaction in Israel by the opponents of withdrawal from Gaza is, “Look, we were right. We should never have withdrawn from Gaza in the first place.” We do not want to send the wrong message to Israel by allowing rockets to continue to rain down on Israel from the areas that it releases.
Secondly, people are calling on Israel to be proportionate and restrained. Yes, of course it must be proportionate and restrained, but what do we expect the Israelis to do? Do we expect them to leave open the route to restock Hezbollah’s rockets? Do we expect them to negotiate with kidnappers and thus to create more kidnappers? Do we expect them to let out of jail the people who have been murdering their neighbours? We call on Israel to show restraint, of course, but Israel over many years has been showing restraint in the face of those rockets. A couple of weeks ago I was in Kandahar and had to spend two hours in a concrete air raid shelter because of the fear of rockets coming in from the Taliban. To be honest, it turned out to be almost a bit of a game. But in Israel it is happening night after night, and the Israelis could see that going on time after time and never stopping.
Thirdly, the Iranians are talking about their nuclear weapons. We cannot just ignore what the Iranian President says about wanting to wipe Israel off the face of the map. We cannot pretend from our western perspective that he never said it or that he was joking. I believe that he meant it. The way that he is working, through Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah, is something of which we need to be very scared.
My final point
echoes a comment by the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and
Selkirk
(Mr. Moore). It is worrying that 80 per cent. of Palestinians
are living below the poverty line. In the long term, the only solution
to the problem is dramatically to regenerate the economies of Palestine
and Lebanon. One can of course argue that that will not be achieved by
destroying all the infrastructure. Equally, however, it will not be
achieved if the security situation there is such that they are free to
launch rockets and to intimidate Israel, their democratic, rule-of-law
neighbour.
I will not have changed many minds, but at least I have been brief.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The three-minute limit will apply to the next 10 speeches.
5 pm
Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West) (Lab): I, too, will not be balanced because of the limited time available.
I absolutely accept that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister are acting in good faith. I am sorry that the Foreign Secretary cannot be here to hear that. However, I profoundly disagree with their judgment on this issue. I do not feel that the Prime Minister’s responses to questions yesterday and following the G8 summit demonstrated an even-handed approach, and many of my constituents have contacted me to say the same. That particularly applies to the issue of proportionality by the Israelis. It is meaningless for the Government to keep saying that they call on the Israelis to exercise restraint and ask them to be proportionate and to act within international law, but then fail pointedly to answer the question of whether they think that the current action is proportionate or within international law.
The blitzkrieg—there is no other way of describing it—that has been unleashed on Lebanon beggars belief. Merely talking about numbers of missiles on either side does not get across the inequity of the situation. Israel is the fourth largest military power in the world. Its missiles and weapons are of a different order of magnitude to the weapons ranged against it. That is not to excuse the people attacking the Israelis; I decry those attacks too. However, it is out of all proportion to launch that indiscriminate blitzkrieg on Lebanon against civilian targets, which has already resulted in 359 deaths, including 294 civilians, of whom a third were children. Some 1,000 people have been wounded and 500,000 displaced. Now that the foreign civilians have been evacuated, there is a fear that the bombing will increase still further. The Israeli defence force said today that it believes that it has got rid of half of Hezbollah’s military capability. Does that mean that there are to be another 359 deaths and another 500,000 displaced before it has achieved its aims and stops what it is doing?
If the Government are to have credibility, they must be seen to be even-handed and to uphold international law and say that the Israeli action is disproportionate. Many people in Israel are prepared to say that their Government are acting disproportionately, so why will not this Government do so?
I should like to draw attention to the action in Palestine, where Gaza is under siege. The whole civilian population—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I call Mr. John Bercow.
5.3 pm
John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey). I endorse the gracious tribute that the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright) paid to the newly elected hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies), who made a passionate, decent and admirable speech of which he should be proud.
Of course, there is terrible violence and an enormous crisis in the middle east, and that is the immediate pretext for today’s debate. However, there are other crises elsewhere, and I would like to focus briefly on a couple of them.
First, there is the running sore and international shame of what continues to take place in Darfur. So far, more than a third of a million people have lost their lives and 2 million people have been displaced—250,000 have been displaced in 2006 alone. The crisis has erupted over the border into Chad. Foot-stamping by the Sudanese Government has already prevented a vital deployment of troops by the United Nations to Darfur. It cannot be allowed, through procrastination, delay and objection, to prevent that necessary deployment again. I appeal to the Minister for the Middle East to advise the House today of what the Government are doing in response to the cri de coeur from the African Union, the aid agencies and others to press the matter, bring it before the United Nations Security Council and try to ensure that, sooner rather than later, there is a vote.
Secondly, there is the long-running crisis—the slow-burn genocide, as I would characterise it—in Burma. Early-day motion 902 has attracted the signatures of 312 hon. Members who are united in calling for United Nations Security Council action. We need a resolution. We have support from European states and we enjoy the backing of the United States. We need the British Government and others to exert diplomatic muscle to exhort African states such as Ghana, Tanzania and Congo-Brazzaville to secure support for a discussion, with the consequence—I hope—of a resolution, binding or otherwise, to try to insist that the regime, which has an appalling human rights record, is brought to book.
Those two important crises need to be tackled. There are many others but the United Nations must now decide what it is to be in future: a vehicle for necessary change in the world or simply an instrument of passive acceptance of an unsatisfactory status quo. Let it be the former, not the latter.
5.6 pm
Richard
Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab): When one becomes
involved in issues such as those in the middle east and develops
friendships there, it is easy to see the suffering of only one side. It
is easy to rationalise the indefensible and dehumanise the other side.
I hope that being aware of that will stop me ever rationalising or
excusing rocket attacks, or saying that
they are okay if they are provoked or—to use that ever-so-polite
word—“proportionate”. If I applythose
sentiments to rocket attacks—I do without qualification—I
also say that, when air strikes kill 300 people and displace 500,000,
when 100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the past few weeks
and when water and electricity supplies are cut to homes and hospitals
in one of the poorest and most densely populated places on earth,
people should not rationalise that or say that, somehow, it is
okay.
I never thought that Ministers in the Government whom I support, who rightly prefix everything that they say with a demand for an immediate and unconditional end to rocket attacks, would find it so difficult to call for an immediate ceasefire by both sides. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East that, unless the Government change their description of events, their credibility in the outside world will take a knock and the charge of double standards will have considerable force.
The Prime Minister told us that we needed to examine the underlying causes and I agree with that. There is no time to consider most of them, so I shall mention only a couple. The Prime Minister singled out the kidnappings of Corporal Shalit in Gaza in a raid on 25 June and two soldiers in Lebanon on 12 July. He said that we must call for their immediate and unconditional release and I agree. However, if we say that, what about the families of the 741 Palestinian prisoners whom Israeli troops abducted and who are still held without trial in Israeli jails? Corporal Shalit is 19 years old; 282 of Palestinian prisoners are under 18. What do we say to Palestinians when the unjustifiable capture of one Israeli causes an international incident but that of Palestinians does not? Can we honestly say that there is no connection between that and the sense of hopelessness that breeds terrorism? There is a connection, and we ignore it at our peril.
5.9 pm
Richard Younger-Ross (Teignbridge) (LD): I should like to repeat the call for another urgent debateon international affairs. The hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) mentioned two other international issues, but there are also problems in Tibet, North Korea, Nigeria, the Caribbean and other places, and we need time to debate those issues as well as returning to the incidents in the middle east.
I shall concentrate my brief comments today on the middle east. We all feel resentment when we are slighted. There are Back Benchers here who were once Ministers and who are still seething that they no longer hold that position. That anger can last for years and sometimes blight their lives. But what resentment must people feel when they see their land cut off by a wall so that they can no longer get to their stock? What resentment must people feel when they see their shops and premises destroyed by shellfire? What resentment must people feel as they stand and watch bulldozers moving over their homes? And what resentment must someone feel when the child in their arms dies as a result of an attack? To balance that, what resentment must an emergency worker in Israel feel when they have to clear up the wreckage and carnage caused by a suicide bomber on a bus?
I do not expect a country to react to such circumstances in an emotional way. I expect a rational response. The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) was right to say that we in the House are friends of both Palestine and Israel. It is the duty of friends to say, “Hold on. We understand your anger. What is happening to you is wrong, but your response has to achieve an end. You have invaded Lebanon before, and it has not worked. Your reaction now might bring temporary respite, but it will make things worse in the long run. You are destroying the bridges and infrastructure that were improving the quality of people’s lives and bringing economic success to the country, which would have done a lot to ameliorate that anger and resentment.” I urge everyone to say clearly to Israel, “Cease. Stop. Pull back from what you are doing. Use surgical attacks if necessary; we understand that you have a right to self-defence. But what you are doing now is not going to help you in the long term.”
5.12 pm
Ann McKechin (Glasgow, North) (Lab): I shall restrict my remarks to the humanitarian consequences of the conflict. As many speakers have mentioned today, more than a third of the victims are children. They are the voiceless ones in this tragedy, and I hope that we will all remember them in our considerations.
I totally condemn the actions of Hezbollah, but all sovereign Governments have a duty to minimisethe risk to civilians and the damage to civilian infrastructure. The United Nations human rights spokesperson, and its humanitarian co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, have both referred to the tragedy that will soon emerge as a result of people being trapped in their homes and cities, which they are not allowed to leave. Their water and electricity supplies are being cut off, and they face an utterly horrific humanitarian disaster.
The international community needs to re-examine its role in this dispute. We were scheduled to discuss the Department for International Development White Paper today, some of which is relevant to our debate. It reminds us that all 191 United Nations member states
“endorsed for the first time the groundbreaking principle of a ‘responsibility to protect’. They agreed that while individual governments are responsible for the protection of their own people, the international community would no longer tolerate inaction by national governments in the face of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity within their borders.”
If we truly want to live up to those principles, we have a duty to make it clear and transparent when any party to this dispute has acted disproportionately, and to call for an immediate ceasefire. There have been reports of a week’s delay until someone does something, but that is not the way to live up to our responsibilities. More than ever, we need to be seen to be an objective party in relation to the dispute. We need to make the civilian populations our first priority. More than ever, we need to show our real support for the moderate voices on all sides of the dispute, whether they are in Israel, Lebanon or the Palestinian community.
5.15 pm
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): I want to make three brief points.
First, everyone has talked about the calm and measured speeches from the Front Benches, and I endorse that. However, on Monday, the Minister who will respond to the debate made an excellent appearance in the House, and I put it to him that it would be a good idea if the ambassadors of Syria, Iran and, indeed, Israel, were summoned to the Foreign Office, so that that calm, measured language could be conveyed to them, and they could be told how the Government felt about these matters. He responded disarmingly and frankly to say that he had not really thought of that, but that it was a good idea. I would like to know whether that idea has been put into practice. It is a time-honoured practice that, when a country seeks to exert influence, and when other countries behave in a less than entirely admirable way, their ambassadors are summoned. I think that that would be good in this instance.
Secondly, I entirely endorse what has been said on both sides of the House about the actions of the Syrian and Iranian Governments, which are utterly indefensible. No one in the House can begin to condone terrorism. On the other hand, at the moment, Israel needs friends who are, above all, candid. It needs people who will say, “Of course we believe absolutely in your right to exist. Of course we are totally dedicated and committed to that. But it is possible that in your response, disproportionate as I believe that it is in some respects, you are actually making your own position much more difficult.” In that sense, the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Richard Younger-Ross) made an eloquent speech, and I endorse what he said. I hope that the Government will talk to Israeli Ministers in that regard.
Thirdly, the people who are rubbing their hands at the moment are those who support terrorism, in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever it is practised. The people who are delighted at the disproportionate response of Israel are the terrorists—the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the terrorists who are raining rockets on Israel and who precipitated this crisis by seizing that soldier a few weeks ago. The House cannot, because of our commitments over the last few years, fail to recognise that fact. That is why I so disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who calls for a withdrawal from Iraq. At the moment, that would send out all the worst signals, whatever one may think of the background.
In the remaining seconds available to me, I appeal to the Minister to respond to my points, and to do everything possible—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
5.18 pm
Emily Thornberry (Islington, South and Finsbury) (Lab): I begin by saying that I speak as a friend of Israel and a friend to the Palestinians. There are many things that I would like to say, but I will restrict myself to one set of comments.
The crisis in the middle east
is a tremendous challenge to the international community, and I fear
that we will not rise to it. We have not risen to it up to now. We have
allowed a situation to continue to develop in the middle east that
generates a huge
amount of trouble, not only for those in the middle east but for those
in the streets of London, those who travel on the buses in London and
those who travel on the tube—my constituents. We need to be able
to resolve the issue of the middle east because it continues to a
generate a feeling of enormous resentment and of justification for the
sort of terrorism that we are now suffering across the world.
If we cannot, as an international community, develop international organisations that can resolve such situations, where are we heading? How can we just stand on the sidelines and say, “The neo-cons are dominating American foreign policy, and therefore we have to behave as though we have been cut off at the knees, and we can do nothing about it,”? How can it be that so little is done about the continuing open sore that is Palestine at the moment? How can the Israelis be allowed to build walls on Palestinian land and the road map be allowed simply to drift? How can that be? Now we see the bombing that is taking place across the middle east and the terrible suffering of civilians, and we seem to be able to do nothing.
We must do something. We must rise to the challenge. We must work together as a whole community, because the world is small and getting smaller. It is our duty to play our part and to be brave, to speak to our friends and to ensure that we behave responsibly.
5.19 pm
Mr. Quentin Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con): I shall make five points in three minutes, if I can manage that.
First, I think that the Foreign Secretary wasvery wise to resist pressure to say whether she considered Israel’s response to be proportionate or disproportionate. I am sorry that others were not quite so statesmanlike. It is extraordinarily difficult to say what is a proportionate and what is a disproportionate response in such circumstances. Is it proportionate not to take out stores of missiles because Hezbollah chooses to locate them in populated areas? That is scandalous in itself, and is of course the responsibility of the Government of Lebanon, although no one has wanted to say that in the House today. The Government of Lebanon have simply acquiesced in the state of affairs for a very long time. They have made no attempt to enforce Security Council resolution 1559, and I am afraid that a great deal of responsibility now lies on their shoulders.
Secondly, there is no doubt in the House and in the world about who is responsible for this. The middle east has been pretty calm for the past couple of years, and certainly during the past few months. There can be no doubt that it was an entirely gratuitous and deliberate decision by Hamas and Hezbollah—perhaps acting in concert, perhaps not—to attack Israeli soldiers, and to capture some Israeli soldiers and hold them hostage, that started the crisis. We do not do a service to the facts, and we certainly do not do a service to peace, if we do not recognise that, and if we try to put the attacker and the attacked and the innocent and the guilty on the same footing.
Thirdly, many
people are now saying that because there is great conflict and loss of
life on all sides, the
answer is for the international community to put pressure on the
parties. That is understandable, but it has not been thought through
properly. It is not possible to put pressure on Hezbollah or Hamas. It
is not even possible to put pressure on their supporters, Syria and
Iran. If we could put pressure on Iran we could solve the nuclear
weapons problem, but we all know that we cannot do that. Putting
pressure on the parties basically means putting pressure on
Israel.
What a perverse and absurd situation that would be. What a terrible, dangerous message to send around the world, and the middle east in particular: that if a country launches rocket attacks on Israel or attack Israeli soldiers, the international community will put pressure not on that country but on Israel. That really would be extremely perverse and extremely dangerous, and we should not do it.
Fourthly, Israel must learn the lessons of its mistakes. In no circumstances should it carry out a prisoner exchange. It is, to some extent, paying a terrible price for having done that in the past.
My final point is that the only solution is an international force. That is the only alternative to an indefinite buffer zone in southern Lebanon—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman’s time is up.
5.23 pm
Mrs. Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op): The events of recent weeks are part of an ongoing tragedy for all peoples of the middle east. Israel has suffered an unprovoked attack on its cities from Hezbollah in Lebanon after withdrawing from Lebanon, which is in contravention of international agreements and assurances given through the United Nations at the time. Similarly, since Israel withdrew from Gaza its cities have been subject to shelling from Gaza.
Israel is entitled to defend itself, and it is rational for Israel, when subject to shelling and rocket attacks from Lebanon, to go to the source of that shelling and the source of those rockets. It is the responsibility of Hezbollah and the Lebanese that they have, disgracefully, put so many civilians in the line of fire, and that is absolutely to be deplored.
It is important for the nature of Hezbollah to be recognised. Hezbollah is just one of the rejectionist terrorist organisations that are determined to prevent there ever being peace between the Israeli and the Palestinians. It is linked with Iran, which has described Israel as a cancerous tumour that should be removed. It is a terrorist organisation. It murdered more than 200 people in the Argentinian Jewish Centre in 1992. It was implicated with Yasser Arafat in bringing arms to the Palestinian Authority in violation of the Oslo agreement in 2002. It murdered Israeli civilians at the Matsuba kibbutz in 2002.
What is the
solution? The immediate solution is a ceasefire, yes, but it must
include securing Israel’s northern border so that its civilians
are not subject to indiscriminate attacks, financed and supplied by
Iran
and issued through Hezbollah. The long-term solution must be a return to
the road map, a negotiated agreement on a two-state solution of a
Palestine and Israel based on the 1967 boundaries and with Jerusalem
shared between those two states. Current events make that even more
difficult to obtain and I hope that our Government will, through their
diplomacy and negotiations, help to bring that situation
about.
5.25 pm
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con): I welcome the statements made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Moore), who both made it clear that they believed that Israel’s response was not proportionate. As to what the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) said, we would have been much better off if Israel had exercised restraint. Indeed, Israel itself would have been a great deal better off. We have been down this road before, in 1982, and Hezbollah grew and sustained its strength out of the consequences of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that year. The consequences of the present invasion of Lebanon will be far more damaging to the Government of Lebanon than to Hezbollah, which is not in the best interestsof all.
In the very few moments available, I want to reflect on the dangerous overlap with our policy towards Iran—a source of considerable danger for the liberal west, as its values are so different. The situation is somewhat analogous to that of the Soviet Union, which was also a powerful force that was very different from us ideologically. My proposal is that we need to understand the country a little better and try to develop contacts with it, as I am attempting to do myself. However, Israel continues to accept the appalling injustice that has been meted out historically to the Palestinians and does not appear to be pursuing a policy that recognises that injustice. Until the Palestinians start to feel that Israel has a made, atthe very least, a serious attempt to address it and to find a two-state solution, all these issues are going to get horribly mixed up—and with all the consequences for the strategic position of ourselves and our allies.
We have been quite close to a two-state established solution. The Geneva accord was negotiated between Palestinians and Israelis of good will. The negotiations at Taba and then at Camp David came close. I would reject the interpretation that the Palestinians missed an important opportunity, as they could not realistically have accepted what was on offer. What the Government of Israel and the Israelis need to understand is that until the Palestinian issue is addressed, Israel will never have peace. Until that is done, we are going to get into these horrible complications of living in a world split between Islamic and our own ideologies, in which the state of Israel is going to be a horrible—
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