Gaza — Statement

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 4:07 pm on 12 January 2009.

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Photo of Lord Malloch-Brown Lord Malloch-Brown Minister of State, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Minister of State (Africa, Asia and the UN) 4:07, 12 January 2009

My Lords, I thank both Benches opposite for the support they offered to British policy. I think that all recognise just how difficult this is—the cover of this week's Economist said it all, describing this as a 100-year conflict. The roots go deep. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, while the blame game is not the way to go when we need to look forward, the difficulty is that both sides expect to hear us touch certain bases before they are willing even to open their ears to any proposal we have. My colleagues the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have done a very good job in recent days of walking through this minefield in trying to arrive at a balanced position.

However, as would perhaps be the case for a conflict of 100 years' or longer duration, balance is not always welcome. The reaction in Israel to Resolution 1860 has been negative, to put it mildly, across most shades of political opinion as well as in public opinion, where levels of support for the war remain high. There is a feeling among Palestinians that it is too little, too late. In Palestinian eyes, the long bias of western policy is not corrected by this resolution. Therefore, we in government—indeed, all noble Lords who care about the Middle East—must fight hard to make heard our voices as well as our calls for moderation and the end of violence, at a time when passions are high and people immediately revert to more extremist, violent positions in both language and deed.

We support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that the process must start on both sides with the stopping of the bombings and the rockets attacks. Certainly, if we are to proceed successfully towards a sustainable ceasefire, the sheer size of the Israeli arsenal means that Israel needs to demonstrate clearly that it has suspended its aerial and ground operations. However, as many have said both in Israel and outside it, the difficulty with Resolution 1860 is that a ceasefire alone may not be sustainable: it must go to the broader agenda of opening the crossings as well as steps to prevent arms smuggling and the renewal of Hamas' weapons supplies. Israel must have confidence that its civilians will not come under rocket attack again and that any ceasefire will hold.

I certainly take the point about the "rebuilding of Gaza". My shoulders, like those of other noble Lords, slump when I hear that phrase. How many times have we already "rebuilt Gaza"? As a UNDP administrator, I opened a civilian airport building at Gaza airport. As I did so, a Palestinian official whispered into my ear, "You'll be back. You'll have to reopen it again—and probably several more times after that, because it will be knocked down, you know". For a Government such as ours who have been extremely generous in our financial support for the reconstruction of Gaza, there must be recognition on both sides that we cannot continuously go through this cycle of political failure and violence followed by a big Western cheque to get the economic infrastructure back on its feet. The fact of our economic support gives us a right to sit at the table and bang it hard, to insist that this cycle be broken once and for all. In that sense, I suspect that all noble Lords would strongly affirm what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said about bombing encouraging radicalisation.

Of course there is a role for an appropriate response to attacks on Israeli civilians. Nobody would deny that Israel has the right of self-defence, a right properly enshrined in the UN charter. However, that requires proportionality and the pursuit of the rules of war in ensuring that, as much as possible, only military targets are hit. Those same requirements of course fall equally on the shoulders of Hamas.

The Government will continue to pursue hard that which was called for in Resolution 1860. As noble Lords heard me repeat in the Statement from the other place, diplomacy is carrying on at an intensive pace. There is a recognition that the solution lies not just in New York but among the parties on the ground. That has now become the focus of our efforts.