Debate on the Address

This Government and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister have played an extremely active role in trying to bring about a peace process, and they were largely responsible for the formation of the Quartet, an issue with which I shall deal before I sit down. The people who were killed as a result of that ““technical error”” are still just as dead as if they had been killed deliberately. Corporal Shalit, who was kidnapped in the summer and whose kidnapping is the stated reason for Israeli aggression in Gaza, remains unfree. So the situation remains: the Israelis kill and maim, their own citizens are killed and murdered—by rockets, for example—and their soldiers die. They achieve none of their objectives, and they will achieve none until a peace process is arrived at. Meanwhile, every single Palestinian is in grinding poverty, and there is widespread unemployment. Palestinian unemployment, poverty and deprivation, which are at third-world levels, are made even more unacceptable by the fact that the Palestinians live minutes away from Israelis who possess first-world standards of living. Such living standards are often a result of subsidisation by the United States Government, who also subsidise Israeli armaments. The Palestinians are not only forced into grinding poverty; they are humiliated at the 300 or more checkpoints that the Israelis have erected, and which impede Palestinians’ freedom of movement. I led our House of Commons and House of Lords official Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to the Palestinian territories just under a year ago, and we were treated abominably by Israeli soldiers, who threatened us at gunpoint. But we experienced that for only a few days; for the Palestinians, that is their life, every single day, with no let-up. That is totally unacceptable to any civilised society, including the civilised society upon which Israel was founded, and according to which it conducted itself for so long under enlightened leadership. Such leadership is distinct from this ineffable Israeli Prime Minister, whose rating has fallen in the Israeli polls to 7 per cent., and—I am very sorry to say—from the Defence Minister and leader of the Israeli Labour party, who has tarnished that party’s wonderful record as the founding party of Israel. The wall—the illegal wall, which was condemned by the International Court of Justice—is still being built, as has been pointed out. However, none of what the Israelis are doing is doing them any good whatsoever. The wall is not only being built in Palestinian territory and creating deprivation and separation; it is turning Israel into a self-created ghetto. My family came to this country from the ghettos of eastern Europe. Israel was created to ensure that no Jews ever again would have to live in a ghetto. So the Israelis have now created their own ghetto, in which their own Jewish and Arab citizens have to live, and in which they have no freedom of movement whatsoever. Therefore, the situation is not only appalling for the Palestinians, but for the Israelis. They are still getting away with murder, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. They kill large numbers of people, whether through technical errors, as they call them, or in other ways, and destroy families, none of which does the Israelis any good, let alone anyone else. It is with deep regret that I say that while the United States supports the neocons who still surround President Bush even after his electoral setback, the Israelis will be impervious to international opinion. It is no use appealing to the good will of Ehud Olmert, because he does not have any. It is no use appealing to the good will of Amir Peretz or Shimon Peres, because they have sunk the noble identity of the Israeli Labour party into the alliance with Olmert and others. Now we have the Yisrael Betenu party—a racist party that wants to ship off Palestinians—sitting around the same Cabinet table as Labour leaders in Israel. That is absolutely obscene. On many occasions, I have advocated economic sanctions against Israel. I still believe that if the Israelis will not listen to reason and act with reason, economic sanctions are the only way.