Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but I stress that people can do even easier energy effective things more rapidly. I have supported annual targets, but I have listened to the arguments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I believe that he will accept interim targets—I also listened to the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe—but five years is too long a gap. I hope that there can be a compromise, and I think that two or three years would provide sufficient discipline over delivery while allowing the flexibility to adjust for unforeseen events. I would like to say a lot more on that topic, which is the greatest threat to our security, but another topic increasingly distracts from it: the so-called war on terror. I have recently returned from a visit to Palestine with the International Development Committee. I shall speak personally, not on behalf of the Committee, and about the politics rather than the development issues. On the plane home, I was given a copy of The Jerusalem Post. Its editorial dealt with the loss of life in the mistaken Israeli shelling of civilians in Gaza. It said:"““all the Palestinians need to do to end Israel’s military operations is to stop attacking Israel.””" Sadly, all our conversations with the Israelis were reduced to military operations. The issue, however, is not just military operations; it is the military occupation. Of course, Israel has an absolute right to defend itself against attacks, but it has no right to continue to build settlements deep in Palestinian territory, nor to build a barrier deep in Palestinian territory. Only 20 per cent. of that barrier now runs along the internationally recognised green line. Over half the west bank barrier, as we saw it, is now complete—42 km in concrete blocks, and 320 km in 50 m-wide wire fences with patrol roads, barbed wire tracking sands and electronic observation. It has to be seen to be believed. Most of the barrier separates Palestinians from Palestinians—people from their towns, hospitals, schools and agricultural lands. In order to cross those barriers, they need permits. In some towns, no permits at all are allowed for young men. Many roads in the west bank territories are for the use of Jewish settlers only. Where Palestinians are allowed to travel, they require a whole range of permits and more than 500 checkpoints impede their passage. Continued settlement in defiance of the road map and the building of illegal barriers are cutting the west bank in two, jeopardising that internationally recognised and proposed solution. The Jordan valley is now entirely cut off. Since Israeli disengagement, Gaza has become effectively a fortified prison, with its three crossing points more often closed than open. The thousands of Gazans who had jobs in Israel are no longer allowed to pass. Following the disengagement, a business consortium bought over settlers’ greenhouses and successfully raised crops of fruit and vegetables. All were pre-sold for export but had to be dumped in the sea when Gaza’s only trade crossing point was closed. Earlier this year, however, the occupation took on an even more insidious dimension when Israel stopped transferring to the Palestinian Authority the revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinians from trade—worth around $60 million a month. Those revenues have not been paid to the Hamas-led Government for eight months. As a consequence, the Palestinian Authority’s health workers, teachers, police and others have gone unpaid, with direct or indirect consequences for up to a third of Palestinian families. With no resolution in sight, the health workers in Gaza stopped going to work this month, resulting in every emergency room being closed in the Gaza strip during its worst period of violence. Time is running out for the Palestinians. Their lands are occupied and divided. The constant tightening of the occupation on millions of people cannot be the answer. Of course, Israel is under attack from the hundreds of home-made rockets launched constantly from Gaza, and Corporal Shalit is still unaccounted for. The oppression of a whole people, however, is disproportionate and cannot be sustained. The Prime Minister is right in seeking to engage Syria and Iran in tackling the problems of Iraq and recognising that returning to the road map and the two-state solution for Palestine is crucial to any wider settlement. The Palestinians, as I know from more than one trip and many meetings with them, are among the most liberal, educated and entrepreneurial peoples in the middle east. They have chosen historically to live in a secular society with a high degree of religious tolerance. We need to ask ourselves in what direction continued oppression will drive them. It makes no sense to talk to the leaders of Syria and Iran if we cannot talk to the democratically elected leadership of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority. If Mahmoud Abbas can bring together a technocratic Government, as he has struggled to do for months, with the support of Hamas, the international community must not hesitate to embrace that Government. Without justice for the Palestinians, Israel will never be secure, and there will be no prospect of peace in Iraq or in the wider region.