Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DR HANI
ALBASOOS, MS
NOMI BAR-YAACOV
AND DR
AHRON BREGMAN
11 FEBRUARY 2009
Q20 Mr Purchase: On the back of
this, may I ask a question on the tunnels in particular? Caches
of arms may or may not be coming through the tunnels, but given
that there has been a serious reduction in the ability of Hamas
to do very much at all in terms of attacking Israel, and given
the questions you have raised about the war and the occupation,
what right has anyone to stop Hamas rearming? The likely relationships
for the foreseeable future could be very difficult, and conflict
could break out again at any time, so why would it be right to
stop Hamas rearming?
Dr Bregman: From the Israeli point
of view, some factions of Hamas—although not all of them—declared
that they want to destroy the state of Israel. So from an Israeli
point of view—this is not my opinion—you do not want
them to have weapons. You do not want them to be able to fire
rockets and missiles on Tel Aviv. The rockets are quite primitive:
pipes with some explosives and a little engine at the end. But
if they have the big ones that could reach Tel Aviv, the Israelis
are not interested in them making these weapons.
Q21 Mr Purchase: It would have
been very nice for America if Russia had not been able to build
up its arms. That goes without saying. We all want disarmament,
but in the situation that we have in the Middle East where, regrettably,
conflict could break out at any time, what moral grounds are there
for anyone to prevent the Palestinians from rearming to defend
themselves or, indeed, to try to win back that part of the West
Bank from which they are currently cut off?
Dr Bregman: They fire from the
Gaza Strip, not from the West Bank. The Israelis—I do not
want to speak for the Government; I am very critical of the Government
of Israel—left in August 2005 and they hoped that it would
be quiet there and that the Palestinians would not rearm themselves
with weapons but would use the greenhouses that were left behind
by the Israelis to grow tomatoes or whatever. Instead, after the
Israeli departure in 2005, we can see the reality now, which from
an Israeli point of view is unacceptable.
Mr Purchase: I can see that from the
Israeli point of view, absolutely.
Chairman: I am conscious that we have
a lot of areas to cover, but Dr Albasoos would like to say something.
Dr Albasoos: On that point, Israel
did not withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005; it was a redeployment.
They took troops out of the Gaza Strip itself, and Gaza was left
completely under siege from the air, from the sea and from the
ground. No one can leave or enter Gaza without permission from
the Israeli side. Is that not an occupation? No one can disagree
that it is a complete occupation. It is not a free Palestine or
Gaza Strip—Palestinians have been, and are still, under
occupation. They have the right to resist the occupation and to
defend themselves. People in Gaza and the West Bank see Hamas
as their defenders. I am not defending Hamas, Fatah or anyone;
I am just trying to raise the point of justice and fairness. We
have to be just and fair to the Palestinian people who have been
under tight occupation and siege for many years, and no one has
given them the right to statehood.
Chairman: We will come to other areas
in a moment. Would you like to comment briefly, Ms Bar-Yaacov?
Ms Bar-Yaacov: Just to answer
Ken Purchase very briefly, I think Fatah is just as worried as
Israel about the rearming of Hamas through the tunnels. You were
talking about the West Bank, but those guns could be turned on
the West Bank. Hamas overtook Gaza in a very violent operation
in June 2007, and both Fatah and Hamas were smuggling arms through
those tunnels at that time, so I think that where those arms go
is a very serious issue. It is not only that they could be pointed
at Israel—there could also be another civil war in Palestine,
so I think it is a very serious issue and our efforts need to
concentrate on a ceasefire rather than on trying to rearm both
sides.
Mr Purchase: I am with you there, of
course.
Q22 Sir John Stanley: Do our witnesses
agree with the analysis that has been made in some quarters since
the war that the geographical pattern of Israeli air strikes,
artillery and tank shelling, and destruction on the ground by
their ground forces, suggests that the unannounced and unspoken
Israeli war aim was the destruction to a very considerable extent
of the crop growing and agricultural potential of Gaza in order
to produce a still greater dependence of Palestinians in Gaza
on imported food, which would therefore make them more vulnerable
and dependent on Israeli control via the Israeli checkpoint?
Dr Albasoos: According to Oxfam,
70,000 Palestinian workers and 40,000 Palestinian farmers have
lost their jobs because of the siege. I witnessed myself—I
came from the Gaza Strip three months ago and was there for the
past two years—how much of the Palestinian land and how
many greenhouses have been destroyed by the Israeli army, which
assumes that some Palestinians launch missiles from those areas.
Nearly 40% of the Palestinian agricultural land in the Gaza Strip
was ruined by Israeli activities, and there is nothing left for
the Palestinian people. According to the UN, 80% of Palestinian
families are dependent on food aid. We have a complete dependency
on the Israeli economy and on international aid. The Palestinian
economy cannot withstand that—we do not have an economy
at all anyway.
Chairman: I am conscious of the time.
I will bring in Fabian Hamilton now.
Q23 Mr Hamilton: Dr Albasoos,
you mentioned the withdrawal of Israeli forces in 2005, but I
remind you that the Israeli settlements were taken down against
the will of the settlers, who were forcibly removed. I accept
the points you make about the closure of the borders, but we should
not forget that those settlers were removed from Gaza completely.
Dr Albasoos: Those settlements
were illegal in Gaza.
Q24 Mr Hamilton: Yes they were,
and they were removed by the Israeli Government.
I just want to look further at the situation
on the ground right now. In response to some of the figures that
have been quoted I do not think anybody would disagree with the
fact that one death in Israel or in Gaza is one death too many—nobody
would disagree with that. It is an absolute tragedy that so many
people lost their lives.
One of the reasons there were fewer deaths
on the Israeli side was that they were better organised in trying
to avoid the rocket fire, but I am sure you would all agree that
rockets being fired over from the Gaza Strip, whatever the reasons
for it, for eight years, have a really desperate effect on the
people of Sderot and the other settlements in southern Israel,
night after night. There are children in that area who have not
had a night's sleep for eight years. That was the motivation,
it seems to me, behind what the Israeli Government did. I am not
saying that I agree with that. At this stage we have a problem
with Hamas; we have talked about how Hamas is still very much
in control and perhaps stronger than before the Gaza war. How
do you think the international community can now most effectively
facilitate post-war reconstruction? Does the international community
now have to deal with Hamas whether it likes it or not—with
an organisation that is, as you said, committed to overthrowing
and destroying the state of Israel? Is that the only option for
reconstruction, because in the end it is the humanitarian need
that is paramount, and it is the people who need that help?
Dr Albasoos: If I may correct
you, Hamas is committed to a two-state solution. Hamas is not
committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. That is one
point. The second is dialogue: I think the time has come for the
international community to speak to Hamas. Hamas was elected in
January 2006 by the majority of the Palestinian people. Hamas
was the choice and is still, I think, the choice of the Palestinian
people. We cannot ignore this fact. We cannot talk about democracy
in some states and at the same time ignore that democracy for
other people. We have to be equal, just and fair for the Palestinians.
Hamas represents the majority of the Palestinian people; we cannot
choose the easiest Palestinian party to talk to. Fatah has been
corrupted. Mahmoud Abbas, from a legal point of view, is not Palestinian
President according to the Palestinian constitution. He is no
longer the Palestinian President at the moment. The choice is
for the international community. You have to talk to the Palestinian
people and talk to both Hamas and Fatah, on behalf of the Palestinian
people.
Q25 Chairman: Dr Albasoos, may
I just take you back to what you said at the beginning? You said
that Hamas is committed to a two-state solution. Can you tell
me where Hamas has explicitly said that it is committed to a two-state
solution? I have read the Hamas charter, I have seen the various
statements made by Mr Meshaal and other people, and I have not
seen an explicit statement from Hamas that it believes in a two-state
solution with the state of Israel. I would be interested to know
the source of that statement.
Dr Albasoos: It is implicit. I
have read many articles[4]
and heard many speeches by Khaled Meshaal and Haniya; and even
the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin himself, said that we
would accept a two-state solution up to the 1967 border with Israel,
and would have a ceasefire—
Q26 Mr Hamilton: Why do they not
make that clear?
Dr Albasoos: They made it clear,
but they have not been given the chance to talk. I am sure that
many of them now want to talk about that specifically with the
European Union and British Government; they are willing to do
so but no one is communicating with them or giving them the chance.
Talk to them, and I am sure that they would accept that two-state
solution. They want to have a decent life in Gaza and the West
Bank. What they are looking for is an independent Palestinian
state in Gaza and the West Bank, on the 1967 border. What comes
after that, in 20 or 50 years' time, will be left for the Palestinians
and Jews in Palestine and Israel to negotiate and talk about,
if there is anything else, in the future. For the current time
a two-state solution is policeable and is accepted by all the
Palestinian people.
Mr Hamilton: It would be really helpful
if their leaders would come out with that publicly. They do not
need to talk to the international community, they just need to
make that clear generally. I have to say that it comes as a shock
to me.
Ms Bar-Yaacov: It also conflicts
with the statements currently coming out of Damascus and Doha.
Hamas is speaking with more than one voice and it would be very
helpful if it spoke with one voice and articulated the view that
Dr Albasoos has expressed. Certainly other views, including calls
for the destruction of the state of Israel, go on being expressed.
Basically, resistance does not go hand in hand with the peace
process. Hamas does not want a national unity Government with
Fatah at the moment that is based on negotiations with Israel.
That is its post-war stance—Hamas feels strengthened by
the war, and whereas earlier in its term it gave a mandate to
Abbas to negotiate, now Hamas say, as Dr Albasoos has said, that
it does not recognise Abbas as President because it says that
he extended his term in January illegally, in contravention of
the constitution. Hamas now says that it does not want a national
unity Government at all, and certainly not one based on negotiations
with Israel on the basis of the 1967 border, so it is pretty tricky.
Q27 Mr Hamilton: My question about
the motivations behind the action in Gaza was not answered. We
all condemn the death and destruction, but can you understand
why they felt motivated to take some action against the rockets,
or is it perfectly acceptable for rockets to rain down?
Dr Albasoos: In addition to what
my colleagues have said, I think that one motivation was the war
in Lebanon in 2006; number two was the election; and number three
was to cause damage to Palestinian society and to eliminate Hamas
from power.
Chairman: We will bring in Andrew Mackinlay
briefly, and then—
Q28 Andrew Mackinlay: Not briefly;
this is my first question. You did this last week and the week
before, and I am not going to tolerate it. This is to Dr Bregman
primarily. I shall take you back to what I call the Harry Truman
point about what is proportionate. I understand that point, because
a million allied lives were arguably saved by dropping the atomic
bomb, but of course there were civilian casualties. But surely
two other points have to be borne in mind. First, there has to
be due diligence by military commanders to avoid collateral damage
whenever possible. I think that at the back of the minds of the
people who looked at this conflict with horror, but also with
an understanding of the difficulties, was the thought that there
had not been sufficient due diligence to avoid a number of civilian
targets, including the big one: the United Nations territory.
The second point, on international law, is that, almost uniquely,
the civilians could not flee. It seems an implicit part of international
law that if you are in a conflict situation, there must be an
opportunity for civilians to get out. Gaza is in a prison situation
and there was no exit. I want to put it to you, from your perspective
as an academic and a former soldier, that that point was not adhered
to. I realise that this is judgmental, but the fact is that there
was not due diligence—the attack on the UN territory is
the classic example—and civilians were not able to flee
from or avoid the conflict. This is not an exact science.
Chairman: Before you reply, may I say
that we are going to have a session on legality with an international
lawyer after this?
Andrew Mackinlay: But Dr Bregman raised
it.
Chairman: Dr Bregman will respond to
your question, but I do not want to get into a long discussion
about international law now because we have other areas of the
politics to cover.
Dr Bregman: I will be very short.
I do not want to justify anything that happened. There is no doubt
about it: the Israelis used excessive force. The Israelis would
say that they dropped leaflets on places that they were about
to attack—invade—and they informed the residents of
these areas before moving in. It is true that there was nowhere
to go. The area is enclosed and small, and that explains why so
many people died. However, from the point of view of international
law, I think that it will be difficult to prove that the Israelis
took illegal action.
Chairman: Okay. Perhaps we will get a
different view when we go into that in detail later.
Q29 Ms Stuart: I was about to ask
what was the chance of a long-term ceasefire agreement between
Israel and Hamas, but I have come to the conclusion that we probably
could not reach a long-term ceasefire agreement for this Committee
and our witnesses. Can I take it as read that that is pretty remote
right now?
Dr Albasoos said that he wanted to be just and
fair to the Palestinian people. I want to, but I would quite like
to be fair to everybody in the Middle East. We are not going to
get anywhere if we cannot agree even about who speaks for the
Palestinian people. Do I take it from Dr Albasoos that Fatah does
not speak for the Palestinian people because it has been—I
think this was the word used—corrupted?
Dr Albasoos: I did not say that
it does not speak for the Palestinian people.
Ms Stuart: You said that Fatah had been
corrupted.
Dr Albasoos: There was a consensus
about this within the international community.
Q30 Ms Stuart: May I ask you not
to use the term "international community" because I
find it a pretty nebulous concept—it is meaningless. If
we want to reach an agreement, we have to negotiate. Israel cannot,
in my view, negotiate just with Hamas; it would have to be Hamas
and Fatah because Gaza and the West Bank are not going to be solved
separately. To whom should Israel be speaking?
Dr Albasoos: We have the situation
between Fatah and Hamas, and the division of Gaza and the West
Bank, which was caused by Israel and the United States—
Ms Stuart: Never mind who caused it.
Dr Albasoos: It is the point.
They selected Fatah and chose to talk to Fatah and not to talk
to Hamas when Hamas got 60% of the vote of the Palestinian people—the
majority. As anywhere else in the world, if you are to form a
Government, that Government has to be formed by the majority.
Hamas had the chance, it formed the Government, and then it was
boycotted simply because it was resisting the occupation and calling
for an independent Palestinian state, and because Fatah had not
achieved anything for the Palestinian people during 15 or 16 years'
negotiations with the Israeli side.
Chairman: I think the question was who
should the Israelis negotiate with.
Dr Albasoos: They should talk
to both.
Q31Ms Stuart: Even if Fatah has been
corrupted?
Dr Albasoos: They should talk
to both.
Q32 Ms Stuart: In that case, may
I ask Ms Bar-Yaacov a question? Even if a voice for the Palestinians
was found, would you agree that unless you also took in Iran and
the Egyptians at the same time, you probably could not arrive
at anything that would last?
Ms Bar-Yaacov: It is vital to
talk to the Iranians, the Egyptians and the Syrians. You need
a holistic approach to this issue—that is where the answer
lies. It is quite clear that this cannot be resolved bilaterally.
As I said earlier, the key to Israeli or US relations with Hamas
lies with Iran and Syria. I do not like the term "international
community", although I might have used it; I try to refer
to Her Majesty's Government or the US or whoever is the relevant
international actor. I think that now there is a new US President,
it is time to rethink and reassess the situation and the detrimental
effect of the past eight years of neo-con rule. We are not where
we were last time I testified here. We are no longer in the same
place, as we have heard from Dr Albasoos. Hamas and Fatah are
hardly talking to one another. Egypt is the key to solving the
Hamas-Fatah rift. Egyptians say that they find themselves negotiating
implicitly with Iran and Syria. There needs to be a new approach
towards Iran and, potentially, some compromise in US-Russia relations
with a reassessment and re-evaluation of that relationship. We
need to take an overall approach that includes Syria. Syria supports
Hamas politically, and Iran supports Hamas militarily and financially.
Ideologically, there is influence from both countries, and I think
that the key to the solution lies in including them in the dialogue.
People think, "Oh, we can't agree," but you do not make
peace with people you agree with. You have to include Qatar and
Lebanon, and you have to include the people who are advocating
defiance, being difficult and annoying everybody because they
are "not moderate". We have to talk to those people,
including Hamas.
Q33 Ms Stuart: Dr Bregman, we
talked earlier about the tunnels. I think that it is clear, whatever
the percentages, that some things going through the tunnels are
needed in Gaza and that some things should not be going through.
Regarding controlling the border crossings to ensure that aid
can go in, do you think that the EU could do more to help them
to be an honest broker there?
Dr Bregman: You do not have to
stop the smuggling on the border itself. You can put an MI6 spy
in Iran to report that an aeroplane, boat or ship is on its way
to the Gaza Strip. You can stop it there; you do not have to stop
it on the border itself. Egypt is there, and Egypt can check what
is going into the tunnels. Of course, the Egyptians have their
own interests. For example, they want more people on the border,
but the Israelis are unhappy about that because it would open
the agreements of 1979. They have no more than 750 policemen on
the border; they need more people. The view is that you can stop
this on the way to the tunnels and let the tunnels work—they
are the oxygen.
Q34 Ms Stuart: So you do not think
that the EU needs to engage more. Do any of you think that the
EU needs to engage more on border crossings?
Dr Bregman: The Israelis might
be interested in international observers or whatever on the border
in Rafah. That was the agreement in 2005, when Europeans were
there. If you could go back to that situation in Rafah, that would
be very helpful.
Ms Bar-Yaacov: I think that the
EU could serve a very constructive role, not in brokering but
in monitoring. One needs enhanced monitoring, verification and
compliance. One needs to have a new mechanism to implement whatever
is agreed, whether that is the opening of a crossing, and whether
80% or 100% is coming in. You need to have some sort of monitoring
system that is more than just EU people sitting there. They would
not necessarily be brokers, but I think that the 2005 access and
movement agreement that Dr Bregman referred to, which includes
EU monitors—the EU Border Assistance Mission—is ready
to go the minute there is an agreement on the opening of the crossings,
which is, of course, tied to a ceasefire. Egypt is, I think, vigorously
negotiating that agreement, and we keep hearing that an agreement
might emerge within days. We thought that there might be one before
the election, or just coming up. At the moment, the Hamas delegation
is consulting its Damascus leadership. It is hard to tell where
this is going, and I would not want to predict when there will
be an agreement and what kind it will be, but an 18-month agreement
is being discussed, and that would include the opening of the
borders and, hopefully, an enhanced, strong role for the EU on
the border.
Q35 Ms Stuart: Do you think that
Egypt has a problem with domestic public opinion of the role it
has been playing following the conflict?
Dr Bregman: Yes. There was a lot
of pressure on it.
Ms Bar-Yaacov: But that is not
deterring Egypt from continuing to negotiate. It is not deterred
by the demonstrations, the imams and the mosques, and it continues
to negotiate vigorously and, I think, in a bona fide way, with
very good intentions.
Q36 Mr Illsley: Regarding my first
question, you have already suggested that the conflict in Gaza
has increased support for Hamas in Gaza and to some extent in
the West Bank. I think that you were quoting from a survey there.
If that is the case, if one looks at the reasons for the military
action, it has failed if the reason was to try to persuade Hamas
to take a more reasonable attitude or whatever. The action has
not achieved that objective. It also increased support for Hamas
in the West Bank—that possibility would have been predicted.
If that is the case, then, even if one takes the cynical view
that the military action was to improve the prospects in the Israeli
election—there is a tight situation with that election result—it
has failed all the way around, has it not? It has not achieved
anything other than taking out the infrastructure of Gaza and
punishing the people of the Gaza Strip.
Dr Bregman: That is the history
of the Arab-Israeli conflict over the last 50 or 60 years. There
is a vicious circle: killing each other and then trying to make
peace. That is how it works in that part of the world.
Q37 Mr Illsley: It would not have
taken a genius to have predicted that if you hit Hamas in Gaza
with that much firepower there would be a little bit of resistance.
Throughout the whole conflict, Hamas resisted with the rockets.
It would not have taken a genius to realise that perhaps that
was not going to crush Hamas. This will perhaps strengthen their
resolve and encourage them to resist even more.
Dr Bregman: That is true, but
the Israeli Government want to lead and must show that they are
doing something. It is not necessarily the right course of action,
but they want to show the people that they are doing something.
It may be silly, but it is done.
Dr Albasoos: This is the norm.
For many years the Israeli army have kept on invading and killing
innocent people. This is not the first time—there have been
seven wars between Israelis and Arabs. In each case the Israeli
army was the invader—in none of those seven wars was the
Arab state invading the Israeli state. They call it a pre-emptive
war, killing hundreds and thousands of innocent people. What would
happen if there were really an attack on Israel?
Dr Bregman: Israel came under
attack in 1973 and 1948.
Chairman: Hold on.
Q38 Mr Moss: Just to pick up on
something that was just said, we have been talking about territorial
invasion. How would you describe suicide bombers? Do they kill
innocent people in Israeli cities?
Dr Albasoos: No one will accept
suicide bombers, even most Palestinians will not accept that.
This is part of the cycle of retaliation, but we do not—and
Palestinians in general do not—accept that. I am saying
that that was a consequence of what happened. Even though there
was enemy silence, no one was asking why that was happening. It
was a consequence of Israeli action against the Palestinians.
We have to be moral about that situation. We have to look back
at the problem and ask where the source of it was. It was an occupation—if
the occupation were ended, then I think we would not have any
violence in the Middle East.
Chairman: We can pursue that, but Eric
Illsley has a question.
Q39 Mr Illsley: We can go back
50 years, as you say, to find out who started the whole thing.
To move on, the West Bank first policy has been pursued by—I
was going to say the international community, but I do not want
a telling off. The West Bank first policy—whoever pursued
it—has obviously failed as well. There is a failure of the
idea that you can separate Gaza and the West Bank and hope that
the Palestinian Authority will get more authority. It is a setback
for other countries with an interest in the West Bank and Gaza
as well, is it not? All this action, whatever it was designed
to achieve, has achieved nothing. We are back to square one, we
are back to the tit-for-tat actions of the past.
Ms Bar-Yaacov: The West Bank first
policy is part of the problem. We have been warning about it in
this Committee since its inception. It is a counter-productive
policy, to put it very mildly. It is time for it to change.
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