Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR MARTIN
DINHAM, MR
DAVID HALLAM,
MR MICHAEL
ANDERSON AND
MR PETER
GOODERHAM
24 OCTOBER 2006
Q80 Richard Burden: But is that happening
at the moment? Is it having a beneficial effect at the moment?
Mr Hallam: At the current time
the Palestinian economy is in a bad way.
Mr Dinham: That is in one part
because of the smaller number of Palestinians who are allowed
to work in Israel.
Q81 Richard Burden: Which is back
to access.
Mr Dinham: The figures are that
there were 170,000 workers there in the late 1990s, something
like 44,000 last year, and the Israeli Government has actually
said that it wants to bring that number to zero by 2007.
Q82 Richard Burden: 2007?
Mr Hallam: End of.
Q83 Richard Burden: Can you tell
us what Israel's obligations are under the EU Israel Association
Agreement?
Mr Hallam: The main point of it
is that it is a trade agreement and it also enables dialogue and
co-operation at a political level. Associated with the agreement
there is a conversation that happens between the EU and Israel.
It covers political issues as well as trade issues.
Q84 Richard Burden: Do they have
any human rights obligations, for example?
Mr Dinham: Yes.
Mr Hallam: Those obligations are
mentioned in the agreement.
Q85 Richard Burden: What are we doing
to ensure that what the international community expects of them,
the conditions, we may say, that are in those agreements, are
abided by by Israel?
Mr Hallam: I am afraid I am going
to be very mean to my colleague Peter and hand over to him because
this is very much his patch.
Mr Gooderham: I fully understand
the thrust of your questions. There are mechanisms under the Association
Agreement and the subsequent Action Plan under the European Neighbourhood
Programme which enables us to raise human rights issues with the
Israelis, which the European Union has done. It has already had
one session and to do that and no doubt has used subsequent engagements
for the same purpose. Our judgment is that on balance it is worth
pursuing this agreement and the mechanisms that exist under it
because it gives us the opportunity to work through the European
Union, of course, to raise the issues of concern that we have
with Israeli policies.
Q86 Richard Burden: In our last report,
you may recall, conclusion 23 said, "Movement restrictions
have caused"—and this is three years ago—"an
unacceptable situation whereby an EU trade agreement is obstructed
by a party (Israel) which itself benefits from preferential EU
trade terms", and the suggestion there was that whilst that
situation pertained that was a pretty unfair situation and that
there should be action taken to ensure that Israel abided by that
agreement or it should be suspended. What is your view on that
now? As things do appear to have got worse rather than better
despite the constructive engagement you had, are you reconsidering
that at all?
Mr Gooderham: As I suggested in
my previous answer, we continue to take the view that on balance
it is important to keep these agreements in place, to use the
opportunities that they present to make our representations to
the Israelis.
Q87 Richard Burden: What have they
achieved?
Mr Gooderham: I cannot say that
we have had particular results yet but it is a mechanism which
we believe over time will enable us to have the sort of dialogue
with Israel which will facilitate resolution of the sorts of issues
that you are referring to, particularly on the human rights front.
That is the position we have taken, the position that other European
Union Member States have also taken, that we think that on balance
it is more important to remain engaged and to make use of the
instruments that we have available to try to influence Israeli
Government actions and policies rather than to walk away from
them.
Q88 Richard Burden: Without suspending
the agreements what mechanisms have you got for implementing the
agreements because Israel has got some obligations within the
agreements, has it not: to respect human rights, to respect free
movement, to respect all the principles on which the EU family
of agreements is founded? What are the mechanisms within those
agreements to ensure that the obligations are followed?
Mr Gooderham: They are agreements
that essentially are about dialogue, they are essentially about
one set of States and another State coming together to discuss
issues of mutual concern, in this case, on our side, human rights
issues. That is the nature of these agreements. They are no different
in the case of Israel than they are from any of the other Association
Agreements that the European Union has with various countries.
Q89 Richard Burden: You see, if you
are a Palestinian sitting in a refugee camp in Gaza and you do
not have access to clean water because of the fact that the water
supplier has been bombed, you do not have electricity because
it has been bombed, your kids cannot go to school because the
schools are shut, let us say you are a farmer and you cannot get
your produce out because of the movement restrictions, and you
are told that as far as you are concerned, for movement to happen
the government that you elected, despite the fact that it was
not engaged in violence at the point of being elected, has got
to sign up in theory to conditions, a lot of which it is abiding
by in practice, before the international community will even talk
about it, but if you are on the Israeli side, even though it is
established that you are not abiding by agreements, that you are
not carrying out your obligations in practice and you are stopping
an EU association agreement with another country, in other words,
Palestine, from being effected properly, and you hear that the
international community's response to that is to continue to make
representations without any enforcement mechanisms whatsoever,
if you were that Palestinian, would you not be justified in feeling
that the international community is guilty of just a smidgen of
double standards?
Mr Gooderham: With respect, I
do not think you are comparing like with like.
Q90 Richard Burden: That is the nature
of double standards, is it not?
Mr Gooderham: I think we have
tried to explain, my colleagues and I this afternoon, why the
international community as a whole, not just the UK and I keep
coming back to that, and why indeed President Abbas himself, have
attached such importance to the principles of—
Q91 Richard Burden: Are you saying,
and this is quite important, that President Abbas has actually
endorsed the cutting off of aid to the Palestinian Authority,
or has he rather said, "You should not be doing it like this"?
Mr Gooderham: I did not say that.
What I said was that he himself advocates the establishment of
a government, whether it is the existing government that comes
forward with a different set of policies or whether it is a new
government, that is committed to the three principles. That is
what he wants to see, and that is what we want to see as well.
Q92 Richard Burden: Does he think
you are going about it the right way to achieve that?
Mr Gooderham: We hope so. That
is certainly the view of the whole international community. We
are in extremely good company with a lot of other countries who
take the same view and also the President of the Palestinian Authority
takes the same view.
Q93 Richard Burden: You are saying
that he takes the same view about your approach to aid to the
Palestinian Authority?
Mr Gooderham: He has made it clear
that he wants to see a government in place that is committed to—
Q94 Richard Burden: Of course; that
is not in dispute. What I am asking you, because you appear to
be implying that he takes the same view as you regarding the cutting
off of aid to the Palestinian Authority and on your approach to
things like the EU Israel Association Agreement and so on, is,
does he or does he not take the same view? There is no dispute
that he wants to see a different government; of course he does.
Mr Gooderham: We certainly have
no impression that he has any difficulty with the proposition
that funding directly to the Palestinian Authority in the current
circumstances is all too likely to lead to that funding then being
siphoned off to Hamas for purposes that would certainly be unacceptable
to our Government and to many others as well. We have worked with
the President and his Office on the establishment of the Temporary
International Mechanism—
Q95 Richard Burden: No, that is different,
is it not? Working with the President's Office to try to find
a way of alleviating the problem is different from claiming he
is endorsing your position.
Mr Gooderham: I was actually trying
to put it the other way round.
Q96 Richard Burden: I know you were
but I would like an answer to the question I asked.
Mr Gooderham: I was trying to
suggest that we were endorsing his position. As I have tried to
make clear, he is clear himself that he wants to see a Palestinian
Authority government that is committed to the three principles.
That is something which the international community supports him
in and which consistently it has made clear.
Q97 Richard Burden: I agree with
you.
Mr Gooderham: That is the situation.
I do not think it is the other way round.
Q98 Joan Ruddock: I want to move
on to another subject, but they are all inter-related, are they
not? This conflict is about land, about territory. It is about
who controls that part of the world. One of the key issues that
we know from conflicts around the world and is predicted increasingly
to be at the heart of territorial conflicts is water. It is essential
for human life; everyone has to have it. We have got some extraordinary
figures and I wonder if you will find these a surprise or whether
they are common knowledge. Palestinian use of water amounts to
83 cubic metres per person per year. Israeli use is 333 cubic
metres, and Israeli settlers' use is 1,450 cubic metres—the
most extraordinary difference and disproportionate use of a critical
natural resource. I wonder if you feel comfortable with those
figures and they strike you as being real. How far do you think
conflict over water is central to continuing conflict and may
possibly be a stumbling block to resolution?
Mr Dinham: It is an absolutely
fundamental issue, there is no question of that, and those figures
do not surprise us but they are very stark. As I mentioned before,
we have been working with the Negotiation Affairs Department which
at various stages has been looking at what are called the final
status issues, and much of the practical work on that has been
around water and about the availability of water supplies and
what the final status issues are. Water is a fundamental part
of the final status agreements and the work that we have been
doing with the Negotiation Affairs Department through the Negotiations
Support Unit has been looking at the details of the water problem:
where the wells are, where water access has been obstructed. One
of the figures I would add to the ones that you have, and I think
was mentioned in your previous report, was that I think there
have only been 13 wells dug between the 1960s and the 1990s during
a period when a lot of the other wells had dried up, so the availability
of water is a very serious problem.
Q99 Joan Ruddock: But is it not true
that Israel gets a considerable amount of the water that it uses
from the Palestinian Occupied Territories and indeed that Israel
is the heaviest user of water in the whole of the Middle East?
Mr Dinham: I think that is true.
Mr Anderson: That is right.
Mr Hallam: The West Bank area,
the Judean Mountains, is an important aquifer for Israel and the
Occupied Territories.
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