Examination of Witness (Questions 240-259)
MR DAVID
SHEARER
28 NOVEMBER 2006
Q240 Chairman: Has anybody recorded
anything—and you have given us anecdotes and so forth? The
Israeli Government, when we passed some of these comments on to
them, said, "We get lots and lots of accusations but if people
give us detail chapter and verse we will accept some responsibility,"
and it seems to me that it would be helpful if they were given
that opportunity.
Mr Shearer: There are two things
that need to happen on the Israeli side. I acknowledge that you
have to give them the anecdotes or the examples, but if you give
the examples there will be a phone call made and just that one
example will be sorted out. I think they genuinely want to fix
that, obviously. The other side—and what we try to do in
our office—is to record the totality of what is actually
happening as a bigger picture and monitor the numbers. That points
to a bigger trend of which the anecdotes are an illustration,
and I think the two go together.
Q241 Ann McKechin: When we were in
the West Bank we did get evidence that rather than people being
able to go to the public clinics, which were closed, they were
actually going to clinics that were operated by Hamas, which had
a full supply of drugs. I wondered whether you had any experience
of that or whether you had any indication of to what level Hamas
are operating a separate health service from the public service,
because I noticed in evidence we have just received this morning
that shipments of medications and immunisations from Egypt into
Gaza, Israel has basically blocked these. They have had to be
transferred to Jordan and from there onwards to the West Bank,
but obviously they cannot get from the West Bank down to Gaza
because of restrictions. Again, do you have any information as
to where those shipments are going? Are they going to public clinics,
private clinics or to clinics which are operated by Hamas?
Mr Shearer: Again, the health
clinics, two-thirds of them in the West Bank, anyway, are government,
or Palestinian Authority, and the others are a collection of private
ones. In the Palestinian situation many of these private clinics
are affiliated to a political party—and it is not just Hamas
actually, it is also Fatah and some of the other organisations
also have their own clinics. Hamas, in a way, through the Islamic
network, has perhaps the strongest, particularly in Gaza, and
it is one of the key points, if you are looking at the election
victory in both the municipal and the national elections, that
Hamas capitalised on, the fact that they did have these clinics
on the ground and they were operating. The private clinics are
now operating to a much larger extent than the public ones. That
is basically across the board because they are all getting independent
funding through a variety of different sources—I do not
know exactly where Hamas are getting their funding from. It is
not a question of Hamas and no other, it is more the fact that
the private clinics are working and the NGO clinics are working
and the public are not—in the West Bank. In Gaza the public
system still functions and UNRWA clinics are operating plus the
private clinics. So, it is a much rosier picture there than on
the West Bank.
Q242 Ann McKechin: The issue of these
private clinics, if they are affiliated to political parties as
you are saying clearly muddies the water about trying to separate
health as a special case, because it almost sounds as though it
is in Hamas's interest for the public sector not to work so that
they can then be seen as the alternative service. It just seems
to me a very unfortunate line that we have political parties operating
clinics, which have no agreement to subsume these into the public
service at some point.
Mr Shearer: This has been a tradition
that has been going on for quite some time. It is not just political
parties; obviously, there are ordinary welfare NGO-types as well.
I would not go to the next step and say it is in Hamas's interests
to collapse the public sector because frankly everybody is looking
at them as being able to deliver as a government, or as an authority.
However, having said that, many Palestinians perceive at the moment
that the reason Hamas cannot deliver on the public side is because
if Israel and the West are withdrawing funding, then they are
powerless. They have the excuse of not being able to deliver,
but are delivering through their own system and they could capitalise
on that. I am not trying to get into the politics of it but that
is one possible implication of that.
Q243 Richard Burden: You have mentioned
the impact of movement and access restrictions on access to healthcare.
Could we explore more broadly movement and access issues, particularly
talking about the West Bank? One of my colleagues will mention
Gaza in a while. Towards the end of 2005 there was an Agreement
on Movement and Access reached and also we are often told by the
Israeli Government that their construction of the barrier has
dramatically reduced the number of incidents in the West Banks,
attacks and so on. In other words, the security situation in the
West Bank has eased very considerably in recent times. If that
is the case one would therefore predict, presumably, that the
number of movements and access restrictions generally, in response
to those two things, would, at the very least, stay the same or
go down. Can you tell us what has happened?
Mr Shearer: The Access and Movement
Agreement was a year old about two weeks ago, and we have a report
coming out—and it might have come out while I have been
here, or will be coming out tomorrow.[2]
It is a `one-year on' look at access and movement across the six
criteria, which was set up on 15 November agreement last year.
The figures are there. There have been some discussions and there
has been more of a willingness, certainly on the US side and to
some degree on the Israeli side, to look at the access and movement
situation in the West Bank again. We have been providing some
analysis of the situation in the West Bank over the last few weeks.
One of the interesting things that we are concluding at the moment
is that in the West Bank the situation essentially is that the
settlements are key to the movement around the West Bank. There
are round about 160-odd settlements in the West Bank—including
Jerusalem there are about 420,000 to 430,000 settlers living in
those. The growth rate of those, from what we understand, is 5
to 6% a year. In addition to that, there are 100-odd outposts,
give or take a handful, which are essentially attached to mother
settlements. With the exception of only a very few they all butt
out from settlements, and they are not just plonked in the middle
of nowhere. The roads that lead to those settlements are the biggest
impediment to Palestinian movement. The settlements cannot survive
without having roads through to Israel, and obviously those roads
need to be free from security incidents. So the protection of
those roads has become, from what we have been able to see, one
of the key aspects of restricted Palestinian movement. The number
of roadblocks and checkpoints has gone from 376 around the time
of disengagement, or just after, very close to the signing of
the Access and Movement Agreement, to around about 530-odd now.
It goes up and down but the general trend is upwards. Pretty much
all of those blocks lie on the roads that lead to settlements—90-something
per cent of them. In other words, if a road is running to a settlement
it is usually blocked for Palestinian traffic. That means that
the roads are either completely free for Israeli settlers only
or they have some form of restrictions for Palestinians to move
along, but Palestinians are restricted in terms of the permit
they are allowed to get on to those roads. Those roads generally
lead through checkpoints, so people are checked. What that has
done is chopped up the West Bank into at least ten different pockets,
and perhaps more, in which the only way you can cross an Israeli
road, which effectively run east-west, is either through a checkpoint
or via a tunnel or an underpass, which has been constructed to
go under those roads to minimise the friction of the contact between
Palestinians and Israelis. That means that essentially, for example
in the case of Hebron, you can close down Greater Hebron with,
say, four or five patrols that close off the tunnels and a couple
of checkpoints and that is essentially Hebron closed off. So the
pockets are highly regulated in the sense of being able to move
between one and the other. The other aspect of the closure regime
is the permits. There are four different types of permits: permits
on people, permits on private cars, permits on commercial cars
and on public transport commercial trucks and public transport.
People are restricted from going across the barrier into the area
between the Green Line and the barrier—they need a permit
to do that. And we are noticing that 60% of land-holders on the
western side of the barrier are now having difficulties or are
unable to get across the barrier. 80% of people who are not land-holders,
and this is increasing, are not being given a permit to get across.
So it is becoming increasingly unviable for people to be able
to farm the area to the west of the barrier. Another area of permits
is males between the ages of 15 and 35, who are living in Nablus.
Last Wednesday it changed, and it has been changing on and off,
but males between 15 and 35 have not been able to leave Nablus
without a permit. That age group also changes and occasionally
it gets lifted, as it has been at the moment, and I am not sure
what exactly the status is today. A third place where you have
to have a permit is to get into the Jordan Valley. The only Palestinians
allowed to live in the Jordan Valley are people who have residence
there, in terms of resident cards, or have a permit to enter,
and generally that permit is only given to work at an Israeli
settlement in the Jordan Valley, and occasionally, for some people
such as teachers and doctors. Other than that, if you have land
in the Jordan Valley and you happen to live in, say, Nablus, then
you cannot get a permit to visit. The fourth place with a permit
requirement is obviously Jerusalem—to get into Jerusalem
now you need a permit. The other place that is severely restricted
for people is into parts of Hebron; to Tal Rumeida in the settlement
in the middle of Hebron, if people want to go in and out there
are also heavy restrictions. In fact we cannot go into that area
without co-ordinating first with the IDF to go in. We used to
be able to, but we cannot do so any more. For private vehicles
it is heavily restricted—there are some checkpoints where
you cannot use private vehicles, you need a permit. It has been
a while since I looked at this, but I think only 15% of private
vehicles can go via checkpoints. For commercial and public vehicles,
it is much easier, but still there are some places which are out
of bounds for which a special permit is needed. Indeed, the permit
regime is quite complicated in terms of where you can go and where
you cannot go and how you get the permit and how you do not get
the permit, et cetera, and how long it lasts for. So the
movement around the West Bank, if you are looking at the economy
and the ability to move to services, is highly fractured and it
can be locked down and closed down in a moment. When we were speaking
to the Israeli Ministry of Defence we have said that from the
IDF perspective, this regime has worked, in addition to the barrier.
Just a word on the barrier, I think even the Israelis would also
say that the barrier of itself has not stopped the number of suicide
bombers, which is much, much lower this year—there were
two or three this year. If the barrier has been successful, the
question is not whether it has been successful or not. It is instead
where the barrier is located and why it should therefore not be
on the Green Line to stop people coming into Israel. The IDF say
that this closure regime has worked, that the number of security
incidents has dropped. The question that we ask essentially is
at what cost and how viable is the West Bank as an economic entity
if it has been chopped up into so many bits and pieces? We have
given them that analysis and said that we do not think that this
is a sustainable solution, but we are not security experts so
it is for them. I am sorry, it is a very long-winded answer to
your question, but I felt it was important to put it on record.
Chairman: I think it is very helpful.
Q244 Richard Burden: You have talked
about settlements as being an essential part of the building blocks
of the network that you are talking about. Could you just say
something about what is the likely impact of the pattern that
you are talking about if the construction of the E1 development
goes ahead? As you say, you are not a security expert, but from
an economy and poverty point of view could you also say something
about the impact of the changes in movement and access restrictions
on poverty and the economy of the Palestinian territories?
Mr Shearer: On the E1 settlement
plan, it is a plan for the construction of about 3,500 housing
units in a critical area of the West Bank, and basically it essentially
joins Ma'ale Edumin, one of the biggest settlements, east of Jerusalem,
with Pisgat Ze've, with the rest of the settlement block in East
Jerusalem. Its impact is quite profound because it is the only
route, currently the north-south route, for Palestinians moving
past Jerusalem. They used to, before 2000, travel through Jerusalem
but they are no longer able to do that. Now they travel around
the barrier—and pass through between Ma'ale Edumin and East
Jerusalem. That is where the E1 plan will go in. So essentially
it is the last cork in the bottle which would impede Palestinian
movement north-south. It is also extremely strategic from the
point of view of movement east-west, particularly from the Jordan
Valley through to Jerusalem because Ma'ale Edumin sits on one
hill and the E1 sits on the other, and the road that comes up
from the Jordan Valley into Jerusalem runs through the Valley.
So essentially it is a component and quite an important building
block as part of a ring of settlements surrounding Jerusalem,
which has been talked about in Ariel Sharon's book. At the moment
no development is taking place, and I think it is important to
point that out. There has been a police station constructed on
it but there has been no other construction and, from what we
understand, there has been pretty solid US and EU opposition to
any further construction in that area, so as far as I know nothing
else has taken place. In terms of the economic and social impact,
I mentioned some of the impact of movement restrictions in terms
of health. The World Bank has done all sorts of studies on this.
The economy relies on the movement of people and goods for its
success, and at the moment we do not have those ingredients. You
cannot have optimal economic development in a situation where
people cannot move freely. Some of the most important areas, Nablus,
some of the most fertile areas, which are west of the barrier,
around Qalqilya, Tulkarm, around that area, are becoming less
accessible, and obviously the major commercial area of Jerusalem;
and lastly some of the important commercial areas of Hebron—the
old city of Hebron is pretty much a ghost town now.
Q245 Ann McKechin: In June 2004 the
Israeli Supreme Court instructed a change in the separation wall
or barrier and its route, admittedly for only 30 kilometres of
its length, and I wondered what has been the impact of the change
of the route in terms of the perception by the settled community
or in terms of the Palestinians living in that particular area?
Mr Shearer: There have been two
big court cases. I think there was one in 2004, which I think
is the one you were talking about, around the Izbat Al-Ashqar
area and the one was in the north was around Alfe Menashe. In
both of those cases the High Court essentially said that the security
needs or concerns needed to be balanced with the humanitarian
impact on Palestinians, and therefore they asked for the barrier
to be shifted. It has been shifted slightly more to the Green
Line; it has allowed some Palestinians to reach some additional
land, but in the bigger picture it is pretty insignificant, frankly.
We are talking about a length of fence that has been shifted but
if you look in terms of the area it has not changed the area or
really moved to the Green Line more than half a kilometre, maybe
a kilometre.
Q246 Ann McKechin: So there is no
real anticipation that the Israeli judicial system will deliver
any more significant concessions on where this wall or barrier
is actually situated?
Mr Shearer: No, I do not think
so. This last case—and I am no lawyer—which dealt
with Alfe Menashe was pretty comprehensive because it dealt with
the International Court of Justice ruling, and it certainly, I
think, made the IDF think more acutely about what the impact was
going to be, and I think it has probably influenced that. But
I do not think it is going to make a significant difference, and
I think the most important issue about it was that it came to
the conclusion that the barrier was legitimate to protect Israeli
citizens, but it did not address the issue of where those citizens
were living. The fact that they were living in settlements, because
the barrier effectively goes around the settlements. 83, 84% of
settlers live west of the barrier.
Q247 Chairman: How do the Israelis
express their argument that they have a right to build a barrier
to secure Israeli settlements that are plainly illegal settlements?
How do they square that circle?
Mr Shearer: The question really
is what is illegal. They do not address that issue. This is coming
from a non-lawyer, but my understanding of it essentially is that
to say that if the settlements are declared illegal by the Supreme
Court, it would essentially challenge the whole executive nature
of government, which it has essentially said that it is legal.
So it would be an extremely profound decision, and what it has
done is not ruled on the legality of the settlements but only
on the Israelis who need to be protected.
Q248 Chairman: A major chasm between
Israel and the international community?
Mr Shearer: Exactly, yes.
Q249 Joan Ruddock: I would like you
to take us through, in the way you have with the West Bank, what
is happening in Gaza in terms of restrictions. You have spoken
a great deal about people movement. One of the things that shocked
me, and I suspect most others, is the whole history of the greenhouse
takeover in Gaza and how crops were produced very successfully,
markets were achieved, contracts were sealed and then the goods
could not be got out of Gaza. It would be good for us to know,
in terms of the Karni Crossing into Israel and also Rafah, of
course, into Egypt, the extent to which there is movement and
the extent to which the economy of Gaza is affected by restrictions
on movement. You may have heard the interesting question and discussion
with the EU representative about the fact that we have had disengagement
of Israel from Gaza in terms of settlements going out, forces
going out, but effectively occupation remaining because of what
we understand to be frequent sealing of the borders. Could you
take us through that?
Mr Shearer: In terms of the access
side of things in terms of Gaza, perhaps to deal with that question
you were raising of the greenhouse production last year, one of
the things in the Access and Movement Agreement was the free movement
of those goods to markets outside of Gaza. Only a very small fraction
of those goods actually got out and the development corporation
that was involved in that lost about $600,000 a day and lost about
$30 million over the harvest time. We heard last week that it
had decided not to replant this year because they felt that the
risk was too great, that they would be in the same situation again.
So that is a major blow because there are about 4,000 workers
involved in that as well according to some of the calculations
we have done for the last year. The workers crossing into Israel
stopped effectively in March. Perhaps I will go through the border
crossings first. The main group is the workers, and since March
around 2% of the Palestinian population—it used to be 30,000
Palestinians prior to the Intifada and it has been progressively
dropping and it was at its lowest last year, and it ended up being
about 3,000 to 4,000 at the end of last year, and now that has
stopped completely. Going through Erez for us is always problematic,
we are often subject to long delays; there have been restrictions
on UN people being able to move through in vehicles. We have been
negotiating with the Israelis on that, but part of the problem
seems to be that a private company has taken over the operation
of Erez and now our ability to influence the operations have become
less because our contact is with the IDF and the IDF then have
to negotiate with the company, so it has become more problematic.
Karni is the major commercial operation, commercial crossing.
At the beginning of this year there was a critical shortage of
flour because Israel felt there were security threats on Karni.
There was a large bomb at the beginning of 2005 that killed five
or six workers in Karni. Karni closed periodically, so much so
that there was a major shortage of wheat flour and a major shortage
of bread inside Gaza. It was then opened, but it has operated
fairly erratically. This is actually documented again in our one-year
review of the AMA. What needs to happen is at least 150 trucks
need to go through a day essentially just to keep the population
alive. The capacity of it is up to 400-odd trucks a day, so there
is quite a lot of extra capacity there, and it has ranged between
150, 250, 300—I do not have the exact average with me. On
the export side, though, the average number of truckloads exported
has been 12 a day. So 1.4 million people living in Gaza are able
to export with 12 trucks a day. Sometimes during the harvest period
it was pretty critical and there was virtually nothing coming
out—four, five, six or something like that. The infrequency
of the ability to export out has meant, as I said, that people
have not replanted and many of the manufacturers based in Gaza
have just closed down and moved to, in some cases Egypt and Sudan,
as I understand, in some cases. Also some of the things were being
produced for the Israeli markets, those suppliers have not bothered
to renew contracts because they cannot guarantee supply. So it
has been a huge loss to the Gaza economy, the fact that they cannot
export out of Gaza. With regard to Rafah, Rafah was the one shining
light in the AMA and it functioned extremely well, with European
monitors being present in the Rafah terminal, and around about
800 or 900 Palestinians were moving backwards and forwards every
day. Again I will not quote too many numbers because I cannot
remember exactly, but they are certainly in our report. However,
after the operation that killed two Israelis and captured Corporal
Shalit that changed, and since the end of June Rafah has been
open for 14% of its normal opening hours. Because of the real
problem of movement that has meant that there has had to be a
prioritisation of cases so often medical cases and other cases
get priority, so ordinary Palestinians, Gazans, are having difficulty
crossing in and out and wait for days and weeks to get the opportunity
to leave or come in. Access has been a real issue. On the other
side is the issue of sea access. Since June, up until about two
weeks ago—or a little longer than that—the fisheries
were closed as well so there were no fishing boats out, and that
is also employment and protein for Gaza. It too has obviously
had a very big impact on the Gaza economy situation.
Q250 Joan Ruddock: I think we might assume,
in all those circumstances, that there would be a very serious
humanitarian crisis in Gaza. You said that there are difficulties
with the UN even getting through Erez and earlier you said that
there is no collection of statistics any longer effectively on
health matters. Are you able to make any assessment of what the
humanitarian situation is in Gaza? Are your people able to have
enough contact to do that, or not?
Mr Shearer: There is a very good
report that UNRWA put out a few days ago—maybe last week—that
looks at this and I think they have also done some analysis of
what has been going on within Gaza. Gaza's poverty rate has jumped
up as well, and expected to be around 79 to 80%, which means that
it has more or less gone from a high level of 50 or 60 up to 79
in a matter of a few months.
Q251 Joan Ruddock: How is that calculated?
Mr Shearer: It is people living
on less than US$2.10 a day. This comes to the whole idea of what
is a crisis and it can be shown in the workforce. In Gaza, currently,
there is 40% unemployment. You take off the 2% who used to work
in Israel, you take off another 22% of PA workers who are not
receiving salaries and you take off another 9% of people who have
lost their jobs as a result of the contraction of the economy,
and you are left with less than 30% of the population receiving
any payment as a workforce. That is a pretty drastic situation,
and really the difference has been effectively made up by aid,
and a very limited number of payments from overseas coming through
remittances. The situation is getting worse. I do not think we
will see an African type of situation here because there is so
much aid entering. The OPT receives per capita more aid than any
other place in the world and it is a relatively low population
and it is a highly urbanised and a quite sophisticated population.
But I think what we will see is not starving children, but we
will see people lacking in protein, people with vitamin deficiencies
and that sort of thing. There is a whole bunch of different indicators
showing poverty; for example, how many people can buy uniforms
for their kids to go to school? These are indicators that we put
in a monthly report called the Humanitarian Monitor, which
looks at many of these things and that collects the UN plus the
PA statistics and tries to make sense of the situation. But definitely
things are going downhill and going downhill quite rapidly.
Q252 Joan Ruddock: Do those reports
contain any assessment of the mental health of people in Gaza?
Mr Shearer: Not specifically.
It does look at psychosocial factors—there is an element
to that in there—and so it does monitor some in terms of
what we think is going on, but it is a more difficult area to
be able to assess, rather than hospital visits and things like
that.
Q253 Chairman: To finish on a couple
of crunch questions that what we have heard leads to. Your evidence
and the previous evidence says that we have a holding and not
very sustainable situation, nevertheless we have also said that
as a consequence of that collapse has been avoided. Does that
not actually absolve Israel of its responsibilities as an occupying
power? Are we not effectively letting Israel off the hook in terms
of its responsibilities under international law as an occupying
power?
Mr Shearer: Yes. What effectively
happened prior to 1993—it is a long way of answering this—Israel
essentially ran the administration in the West Bank and Gaza.
After the formation of the Palestinian Authority the Palestinian
Authority took over many of the welfare functions for its people
and the international community gave development aid of about
half a billion dollars to the PA in order to help to develop that
capacity. So in a sense Israel therefore was able to step backwards
with the development of the Palestinian Authority into a government
in waiting. Israel handed over the effective running of these
welfare functions to the PA, so it stepped back from its responsibilities
as an occupier. In 2000, at the beginning of the Intifada the
international community doubled their aid, mainly through humanitarian
aid. As the situation got worse, as a result of the security situation
and the closures, et cetera, the international community
increased its funding, and that is effectively what has been going
on since. If you look at the TIM in relation to that, the only
difference is that the TIM has replaced the PA in terms of funnelling
money into Palestinians.
Q254 Chairman: That means, first
of all, that Israel is not paying the money that it would have
had to pay, but also it kind of takes the pressure off a bit,
does it not?
Mr Shearer: Absolutely, and Israel
as the occupying power under international law has the obligation
to care for the welfare of Palestinians, not the international
community. The international community has effectively taken that
role on and continues to keep increasing its assistance. It does
not absolve Israel's responsibilities, but definitely it means
that Israel does not need to fulfil those obligations because
the international community is doing it for them.
Q255 Chairman: Or pay for them? It
does not have to pay for them either.
Mr Shearer: Exactly.
Q256 Chairman: I guess Israel will
argue that it is paying for security instead.
Mr Shearer: The International
Committee of the Red Cross had a very big food distribution and
at the end of 2004 decided to end it. One of the two reasons was
that they thought the acute crisis was over; and the second thing
they said is that they did not want to be in the position of assuming
Israel's responsibilities and paying for the occupation.
Q257 Chairman: The final point is
UNCTAD,[3]
and we heard this when we were there, said effectively what was
happening in the West Bank—and some of our questions have
reflected that—is de-development, that where we move into
a crisis situation in other parts of the world we do things like
stimulate the private sector, improve the workings of public services,
strengthen the police, and what we are seeing in the OPTs is restrictions
on the private sector and the collapse of public services, real
worries about how the police are being trained and funded. Would
you call that de-development?
Reference?
Mr Shearer: Yes, we are going
backwards. The money that the international community has put
into the Palestinian Authority to develop it, and I have to say,
from places I have worked before, to a very high standard in terms
of its education and its health. There have obviously been some
problems but there have been some major achievements in the space
of just a few years of the Palestinian Authority in terms of the
quality of its health care and the education system. If you look
at the Palestinians in terms of their literacy rate, 95 or 96%;
their immunisation rate is better than the country I come from;
it probably has more PhDs in its Cabinet, and a lot of other indicators.
It is a remarkable success story, but it is going backwards at
a rapid rate at the moment.
Q258 Chairman: Are the donors in
any sense responsible for that?
Mr Shearer: One donor representative
said to me recently that the aid was to support a peace process
and as the peace process had stopped now there was no need for
aid—that was a major donor. In a way that is true, aid has
come to support the peace process, but I think the key thing is
not looking at the aid and seeing what is wrong with the aid,
it is really looking at what is wrong with the peace process and
where the peace process is going. I think that is not in terms
of donors, that is in terms of countries and how they engage with
both parties to allow this situation to continue. If I can say
a couple of final things. What is happening at the moment is that,
in essence, a failed state has been constructed on Israel's borders
and while we are trying to avoid failed states elsewhere one is
essentially being created before our eyes. I guess the question
is, what part does the international community want to play in
its construction and what it is going to mean. The second thing
is the most fundamental thing: it is an occupation and you cannot
get away from the fact that this is in occupation and next year
will be the 40th year of occupation; that has been forgotten.
Professor Dugard, one of the UN human rights rapporteurs, said
that this is one of the few places in the world where we effectively
have sanctions on an occupied people that have just democratically
elected their government. When you stand back and look at that
it is possibly worth thinking of where we should want to go in
the future.
Q259 Chairman: I think those are apposite
concluding comments and I think that is absolutely the heart of
what we have to resolve in writing our report. Those are really
helpful comments. I think all the information you have given as
to the factual information on the ground has been crucial to our
understanding and the fact that we have physically been able to
see it. Thank you very much for coming here and giving us this
evidence on the record.
Mr Shearer: Thank you for the
invitation.
2 The Agreement on Movement and Access: One Year
on, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, November 2006. Copy placed in the Library. Back
3
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Back
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