Gaza

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 12 August 2014.

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Photo of Sarah Boyack Sarah Boyack Labour

I join colleagues in thanking Drew Smith for enabling us to have this debate.

Following on from the points that John Mason has just made, I do not think that colleagues in the chamber are setting out to be either for or against Israel or for or against Palestine. Quite a few members have made it clear that people support the two-state solution, in which Palestine and Israel would sit side by side as neighbours, trading with each other and respecting each other’s borders.

However, the challenge is that we are as far away from that solution as we have ever been. I visited Gaza 30 years ago on a UN youth visit, and some of the young people I met then will be the mothers and fathers of the children who, as Claudia Beamish has made clear, are now experiencing extreme psychological damage. The contrast between the schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East that I saw, which were dynamic and happy places of learning, and the schools that we see on our television screens now could not be more complete. It says it all when experienced journalists and UN officials find it difficult to compose themselves on TV.

What we are seeing is unimaginable to us. It is almost impossible for us to imagine a situation in which one and a half million people do not have regular access to drinking water, in which there are no power supplies and in which there is almost daily bombing. According to the statistics, 58 per cent of young people, 52 per cent of women and 37 per cent of men in Gaza are unemployed. Those families have absolutely no scope to make an income.

In thinking about what we can do, we need to consider the humanitarian support that is being provided. Considering what they have to deal with, the aid agencies are doing heroic work, and we need to do as much as we can as individuals, political representatives and members of our communities to support their fantastic and vital humanitarian work.

However, we must also demand a political solution. The two-state solution requires the two sides to sit and talk to each other. We know that they do not like each other—after all, they are in a conflict situation—but as other members have pointed out we will not get peace without the parties in the conflict sitting down and being prepared to work together. The parties in this conflict will not choose to do that; instead, they will have to be brought to the negotiating table by a world that is determined to make that happen.

The use of economic power and sustained political pressure will help in that, and tonight we can add our own pressure to the process. We can do that through procurement, whether or not that means choosing to buy Palestinian goods where they are still being produced, and we can do the same as citizens by looking to the fair trade movement and shops such as Hadeel that are still sourcing Palestinian-made goods such as olive oil and embroidery. Those are some practical steps that we can take.

However, the bigger picture is, as others have pointed out, all about the use of economic and political power. That power must be used, because this conflict has been going on for decades. Unlike all the other situations that we could talk about—