Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)

DR. KIM HOWELLS MP, SIMON MCDONALD CMG AND DR. PETER GOODERHAM

14 MARCH 2007

  Q160  Mr. Horam: Thank you very much for that, but it does not explain the relative reluctance of Israel to get involved either in what Condoleezza Rice is calling the endgame negotiations or, indeed, in getting to a clear stage of the road map.

  Simon McDonald: On that, Israelis always point out that the very first line of the road map calls for a cessation of hostilities against Israel. So, if you say that it has not got started, their rejoinder is, "No, because the Palestinians have not done the very first thing that is required".

  Q161  Mr. Horam: A fair point. Finally, can I tackle this from a different angle? I think that we are all pleased that the Saudi Government have got more involved in all of this—Mecca, and so forth—with their own plan, which I think they first aired in 2002. As I understand it, there will be a meeting later this month in Riyadh to discuss that Arab League initiative further. The difficulty over this, from Israel's point of view, is the right to return. That is the sticking point for them and if that was dropped—a big thing, but suppose it were dropped none the less—would the Arab League proposals then be agreeable to the British Government and to the parties?

  Dr. Gooderham: We already welcomed the Arab League initiative, even in 2002. We thought at the time—

  Q162  Mr. Horam: Including a right of return?

  Dr. Gooderham: It has always been understood that that was one issue that will have to be addressed in any final status settlement or negotiation. It would be for the parties themselves to determine how that principle should be applied. What has been interesting in recent days has been the signals that the Israeli Government have been sending about an apparent readiness on their part to look again at that initiative. Prime Minister Olmert quite recently said things in an interview suggesting that there were positive elements in the Beirut initiative, as it is known.

  Therefore, there is obviously some speculation about what might happen at the Arab League summit in Riyadh later this month. To our knowledge, there is no plan to amend that initiative or to rewrite it in any way, but we would naturally hope that the Arab leaders gathering for that meeting would be ready to endorse it again and to reiterate their support.

  Q163  Mr. Horam: What of that, if there is no possibility of its being accepted by Israel and they are not prepared to rewrite it?

  Dr. Gooderham: I do not know that there is no possibility of it being accepted by Israel. The sense that we have is that there might be a greater readiness now on the part of the Israeli Government to look at the initiative. Clearly, that is not to suggest that they will swallow it whole, but they might be ready to recognise it as a significant document and initiative, and to recognise the desire on the part of a large number of Governments in the region to see a solution to the conflict and to be ready, as part of that solution, to recognise Israel in a diplomatic sense as well as an existential sense.

  On the point about Condy Rice and her initiative, I do not think that the US or anyone else is under any illusion. As Simon said, the first phase of the road map is still there and needs to be implemented. Frankly, neither side has implemented the first phase, but we continue to do what we can to encourage them to take the steps needed to get beyond the first stage. However, Condy Rice's idea is that it ought to be possible, at the same time, to embark on a dialogue—she has been very careful with her terminology. She has not talked about negotiations and has avoided the term "final status". Instead, she has talked about a dialogue between the United States, Israel and the Palestinian President in order to establish the principles needed to underpin the so-called political horizon.

  The thinking is that if they could get to that point, they would strengthen significantly President Abbas and what he stands for—the two-state solution. That would enable him to demonstrate to the Palestinian people that there is a prospect of a settlement of the conflict through a dialogue and subsequent negotiations. That is what Condy Rice has been trying to do, and we applaud her for her efforts. We think that it is indeed worth while.

  Q164  Mr. Hamilton: I am grateful to Mr. McDonald for at least correcting the balance and giving us some of the background. However, Minister, do you agree that the disengagement plan to which you referred earlier, and to which Ariel Sharon and his successor, Ehud Olmert, tried to stick—clearly, it is now dead—resulted from the Palestinians promising to respond to each concession given by the Israelis with a further concession and a move towards peace, but never delivering that? I am sure that Israelis have told you that. They would say, "Every time we had an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, we kept our side, but they did not keep theirs. That is why disengagement started." I agree that disengagement was not a very helpful policy, and it has clearly now ended.

  My other question concerns the road map. We would like the road map to work. Some would say that not only have we lost the map, but the vehicle has broken down completely. It never really got off the ground. It seems to me that the Beirut proposals from the Arab League and the Geneva accords, which were track 2 or behind-the-scenes negotiations—whatever you want to call them—between Yossi Beilin, Yasser Abed Rabbo and many other players on both sides, form a sounder basis for a final settlement. Why do the British Government not support or give more credence to the Geneva accords, even though they were quite unofficial and were not Government-to-Government?

  Dr. Howells: If I can answer the last question first, I am not sure that we are trying to demean those efforts at all. We recognise their importance and have played a part in trying to widen discussions on the road map in order to incorporate those ideas and initiatives. I think that I said at the very beginning that we welcome the role that, for example, Saudi Arabia is now playing.

  On disengagement, unilateralism and where they have come from, that is a very big question. When I have spoken to Israeli politicians, they certainly describe the failures of previous undertakings in the way that you did. What surprises me is that when I speak to Israeli academics, they describe it in those ways as well. I think that I told this Committee before about my surprise when I had dinner at an old left-wing kibbutz—I know that none of us is really left wing anymore—and was told reluctantly, "Well, life is a lot easier since we built the barrier." It was depressing, in a way, because it meant that the old dreams about being able to live side by side, with Palestinians and Israelis working together, seems now to have been abandoned. If it has been abandoned unilaterally by the Israelis, I suspect also that it has grown out of the sense of disillusionment that Mr. Hamilton described, about the failure of previous undertakings. I do not think, by the way, that it is only on one side. I think that it is on two sides.

  Q165  Mr. Hamilton: In the end, we all know what the final status will look like. A clear picture has been drawn by the Arab League, Geneva and many academics in Israel and the Palestinian territories of what the final settlement will look like. The problem is getting there from where we are. What more can we do?

  Dr. Howells: I very much welcome our Prime Minister's Los Angeles speech, in which he raised the issue and said, "Look, we've got to do much more about this." I do not know about you, Mr. Hamilton, or about the experience of the Committee, but wherever I go, whether in Bangladesh or Mauritania, the issue comes up constantly. It has a kind of totemic significance way beyond its importance in terms of the size of the area, the population or anything else.

  It is a cause that we must address, and I think that we have put a lot of energy into it since the Prime Minister made his speech in LA. The fact that he made it there was very important, as it was in America. It was a wake-up call to the American Administration that they hold the key in so many ways to being able to move the peace process forward, and that they should be doing more. I think that they are doing more now.

  Q166  Sir John Stanley: Minister, is it the British Government's policy that Israel should return to the pre-1967 borders?

  Dr. Howells: Broadly it is, yes.

  Q167  Sir John Stanley: Are the British Government exerting every possible pressure on the Israeli Government to try to achieve that?

  Dr. Howells: I will give you an example. When Simon was the ambassador there, I went out to him on one of my visits and discovered that our embassy was the only embassy that was pressing the Israelis on consular issues generated by the route that the barrier had taken. Lots of other people say things, but they do very little about it.

  Simon and his colleagues, on a day-to-day basis, were trying to handle cases, putting them to the Israelis and saying, "You are making life extremely difficult for our citizens and nationals who happen to be married, for example, to Palestinians. Imagine what you're doing to the psyche of the Arab street," to use that cliché again. It is something that we have pushed them very hard on.

  It is made doubly difficult by the fact that the Israelis talk as well about the border being a legitimate one that they could live with. I do not hear that so often now, by the way. I think that they are pretty resolute about incorporating bits of land that are Palestinian in order to expand settlements or build a defensive wall around settlements that exist already. As your question implies, it is a complex issue, but one that we would return to time and again. We would say that yes, those are the proper borders and the ones that they should recognise.

  Q168  Sir John Stanley: Can you point to any specific step or agreement that the British Government have secured with other countries in the last year or so that endorses the principle that Israel should return to the pre-1967 borders?

  Dr. Gooderham: The European Union regularly issues statements to that effect when Foreign Ministers meet to discuss the Middle East peace process.

  Q169  Sir John Stanley: Yes, I am aware of discussions about the Middle East peace process but—no doubt you can help the Committee—I am not aware of specific initiatives in which Britain, along with the EU, has said that Israel must return to its pre-'67 borders, achieved in the last year or so. But I would be delighted to be helped if you can point to the relevant documentation.[3]


  Q170  Mr. Moss: I want to follow up the debate we have just had and pick up on the Minister's definition of the barrier and the implications of one or two points that followed. The Israelis would say that, as a result of Sharon's decision and the party of Kadima and Olmert's success in the elections, which was supported by a significant majority in Israel, that it is a security fence. I have seen it; it is a huge wall in parts of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but elsewhere it is a fairly small fence. The Israelis would argue that as a result of erecting that fence, the number of incidents involving suicide bombers has been reduced dramatically, therefore they support it for that reason, and that reason only.

  From what the Minister was saying—I would like him to confirm it—can I take it that the British Government believe that by building that line or security fence, the Israelis have now predetermined their vision of where the border will be in the future? Or is it their view that the Israelis are still prepared to negotiate about a final border, and that the fence is in reality purely a security issue at this juncture?

  Dr. Howells: The problem is that temporary structures can become very long-lasting ones. I find it all too easy to believe that once a fence or a barrier has been put up, the chances are that it will remain there for a very long time, and that is a hindrance to negotiations. We are not saying to the Israelis, "You shouldn't build a barrier or a fence." We are saying that it should be along the '67 borders, along that green line. That is where it should be; it should be on it or behind it. The incorporation of Palestinian land, as is recognised by the rest of the world, does nothing to enhance Israel's reputation as playing fair, and ultimately detracts from Israel's security, because it becomes a running sore for so much of the Arab world that another piece of land has been stolen, that something outside Bethlehem has gone or a part of east Jerusalem has been cut off from the West Bank. That is a very important issue not only for the Palestinians, but for a lot of Arabs around the world.

  I can certainly understand why the Israelis have done it, but I would argue that the route they have chosen is not the right one. It contradicts and breaks the spirit and the rule of Security Council resolutions, and moreover it is probably an incentive, to some elements at least, to think of other ways of attacking Israel which perhaps we have not seen so far—Qassam rockets, for example. We are talking about a very small area; the distance from Jerusalem to the sea is nothing. When I first went to Israel you could see the Palestinian border when you landed on the aircraft; it was almost at the other end of the runway. The Israelis always felt very vulnerable when the border was there.

  By the way, the fence is not a fence you or I might put up at the end of our gardens; it is very sophisticated.

  Mr. Moss: I have seen it.

  Dr. Howells: It is a very sophisticated fence. There are a lot of sensors and an access road that runs alongside it, which enables people to move very quickly if the security is broken on the fence.

  Q171  Chairman: We have to move on. I want to ask you some questions about Egypt. First, may I ask for your assessment of how important Egypt is today in the Middle East peace process?

  Dr. Howells: Egypt is as important as any country in the Middle East and more important than most. It has a very special relationship with Israel; it has direct access to Gaza, and it is a powerful spokesman for the Middle East. In all the meetings that I have been to as part of the EuroMed Barcelona process, Egypt has been the most vocal, if unofficial, spokesman for the Arab countries that are represented there. It is a very important country.

  Q172  Chairman: President Mubarak has been in office for a long time. At the last election, in 2005, he was re-elected for his fifth six-year term. There were also parliamentary elections at that time. There seems to have been a step back from the hopes that people had that Egypt might be opening up. One academic has suggested that "There is no prospect of significant political reform in Egypt in the foreseeable future. It's dead in the water. Western efforts to shape reform in Egypt have been a fiasco." Would you agree with that?

  Dr. Howells: I would agree with some of it, which might surprise you. Last December, President Mubarak announced constitutional amendments, some of which we could recognise as real steps forward towards a more democratic, open society. Some have been interpreted as a step backwards.

  What is extraordinary about Egypt is that the most progressive elements among the chattering classes, or the political class, are very worried about the prospect of greater democracy. They are very worried about the distinct possibility that the extreme Islamic parties could make great progress if the elections were freer and fairer, and that the secular state of Egypt, as it exists at the moment, would come under great threat.

  Q173  Chairman: Is that partly as a reaction to the west, particularly the US? Is there a sense that the ordinary person in the Arab street is rejecting democracy as an imposed value and that changes are being forced from outside?

  Dr. Howells: No, I do not get that impression at all. I think that the Egyptians are very keen on democracy and want more of it, but the political class has reservations about it. There are political classes all over the world that have reservations about extending democracy, as we have seen in the past couple of weeks. The implications of the debate about democracy in Egypt have to be recognised outside Egypt: the political class is worried that it could be handing over the reins of power to religious parties.

  Chairman: We shall move on to some other countries in the region—Lebanon and Syria first of all.

  Q174  Mr. Keetch: I suppose that there is no place for a democracy that produced a result that some people in the west were not be terribly happy with.

  I turn to Lebanon, particularly the appalling assassination of Rafik Hariri. The UN Security Council and the Lebanese Government have set up a special tribunal to investigate the death of the former President, following on from Security Council resolution 1664. There is a widespread rumour—let me put it like that; some of us are off to Lebanon and Syria in a few weeks—that Syria was somehow involved. There will be an attempt to understand exactly who was involved. If the tribunal discovers that Syria was directly involved, will we, as a permanent member of the Security Council, wish to do something about that? I hate to mention the word "sanctions" again—you may fear that I will want to impose sanctions on everybody—but if the fingerprints of the Syrian Administration are on that assassination, what would you seek to do about it?

  Dr. Howells: I do not know what the status would be of those accused of murder, because that is what it was. You have only to go to Beirut and you can still see the hole in the ground where the former Prime Minister was blown up—along, by the way, with 20-odd other people.

  Dr. Gooderham: Yes.

  Dr. Howells: It was an horrendous murder. I have been told that it was one of the biggest ever peacetime explosions—if you know what I mean by peacetime in Beirut. It was a massive explosion. The tribunal was set up was because of the difficulty that the Siniora Government and their predecessor Government had in trying to conduct any kind of inquiry into the assassination, the murder, while Syria had such overweening power in Lebanon; to put it mildly, they were obstructive.

  At the time, the international community believed that Syria's fingerprints were all over that assassination. We would not want to take any position on that before the tribunal completes its investigations, but it is important that the tribunal should be allowed to complete its investigations. What worries me, and it worries a lot of people, is that Hezbollah is probably implicated in the assassination; we do not know that for certain, but there is a good chance that it was—or certainly some Hezbollah operatives, because they are very good at setting off roadside bombs and explosions, as our troops know only too well down in Basra. They decided to do their best to disrupt that investigation and to ensure that it came to nothing. That is at the heart of their attempts to destabilise the Siniora Government and to try, as they see it, to correct the imbalance of the Lebanese constitution, which gives them a certain proportion of seats in the Lebanese Parliament. There are some deep and dark forces at work here.

  Q175  Mr. Keetch: Let me be quite clear. If the tribunal were to find conclusively that the fingerprints of Syria were on the assassination of the former Prime Minister, we as a permanent member of the Security Council might not press for but we would certainly be prepared to consider some form of action against the Syrian Government?

  Dr. Howells: I am going to ask Peter if he can tell me what Security Council resolution 1595 lays down on what should happen to the guilty people.

  Dr. Gooderham: It is important to remember that resolution 1595 established an international investigative commission. I guess that the commission has been at work for well over a year or perhaps 18 months. That is proceeding, and the investigative team's latest report is due to be made this week to the Security Council in New York. We are not expecting that it will deliver any bombshells; it will report steady progress, but it needs to continue the investigations. That is going ahead.

  The idea for some time has been that, in addition, there would need to be a tribunal—a tribunal, as it were, that was owned by the Lebanese Government and therefore under Lebanese jurisdiction that would take receipt of whatever evidence and information the investigative commission has found once it concludes its investigation. That tribunal would then determine whether there were individuals who would need to be brought to justice. In the event that Syrian individuals were among those that the evidence had brought to light, the understanding is that they would need to stand trial and be brought to justice under the terms of the tribunal.

  The difficulty is that the tribunal has yet to be established, because once the Lebanese Government had worked with the UN, taking advice from it on how best to set up the tribunal, and once the Government brought that agreement to a decision, certain members of the Government voiced their opposition to it and withdrew from the Government, and that is what precipitated the crisis.

  Q176  Sir John Stanley: Is it not contradictory for the British Government constantly to seek to defend their interventions in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, in terms of the expansion of democracy and at the same time, as in Lebanon, to refuse to have any dealings with those who are elected under the democratic process, such as Hezbollah's democratically elected MPs?

  Dr. Howells: In my trips to Lebanon—I am going out again shortly—I met the Foreign Minister, who is essentially Hezbollah, is he not?

  Dr. Gooderham: He is linked to Hezbollah, but not actually a member.

  Q177  Sir John Stanley: You did not meet anybody who was a Hezbollah MP, but only someone who was linked to it. As I understand it, that was a key Foreign Office distinction.

  Dr. Howells: I think that you will find when you go there, Sir John—I am sure that you know it already—that definitions and parties are tenuous, to say the least.

  Mr. Keetch: Look at the Lobby later and see.

  Dr. Howells: It is a most extraordinary political arrangement out there, I think. To say that someone is clearly Hezbollah or Amal is not easy. I certainly have not met anyone who openly describes themselves as Hezbollah, but I was told in no uncertain terms by our embassy out there that "That guy is Hezbollah."

  Q178  Sir John Stanley: Should not the British Government be more honest than they are, if I may say so? Should they not state the reality behind their stance, which is that the British Government are in favour of democracy, but only providing that the people who are elected are acceptable to us? That is our position, and why should we not be honest enough to say that?

  Dr. Howells: Because I do not think it is the truth. We talk to the Government of Prime Minister Siniora. We are good supporters of them. Frankly, any Government have to decide who they talk to when it comes to a Government composed like the Lebanese Government. I am not particularly keen to go and talk to someone who might be involved in undermining the democratic process in Lebanon. Hezbollah, as far as I am concerned, is a puppet organisation run and owned by the Iranians with the complicity of the Syrians. It did the Syrians' business when the Syrians, like gangsters, were bleeding that country white while they occupied it. It is as if the American Government were speaking to Gerry Adams and not Margaret Thatcher at the height of the IRA troubles—

  Richard Younger-Ross: They were.

  Dr. Howells: They were not, as a matter of fact. Lots of people were, but they were not necessarily the American Government. It is perfectly acceptable for us to choose to speak to people who we consider are performing a constructive part in a democratically elected Government in Lebanon. I am not going to go out of my way to talk to people who are trying to subvert the democratic process so that they can enhance the standing and position of an extremist Islamist organisation that does not value democracy at all, as far as I can see.

  Q179  Sir John Stanley: I have no difficulty with the refreshingly candid stance that you have given. That is similar to the policy that the British Government followed towards Sinn Fein before the real peace process started. To return to what I said at the beginning, would it not be more candid for the rest of the British Government to follow in your footsteps, Minister, and to stop making tub-thumping, highly generalised claims that all our policies are justified in democratic terms, when our policy is—entirely defensibly, in my view—that we are only prepared to support some parties that are democratically elected, but not all and sundry? Would that not be the honest thing to say?

  Dr. Howells: I hope, Sir John, that we are saying that. I have found myself in some very difficult circumstances. For example, at dinners at embassies around the world I have suddenly discovered that somebody happens to be sitting next to me who is from the respectable end of a death squad from somewhere. The ambassador has, with the best will in the world, invited that person along because he thinks that, under the new democracy, they will become the new Government. Well, yes, that is great. I am sure that we should be talking to such people at some point, but I do not want to talk to them.

  Chairman: I would be interested to know what the diplomatic reaction is to that remark.


3   See Ev 59. Back


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2007
Prepared 13 August 2007