Middle East

Will the hon. Gentleman forgive me if I make a very short comment on the Israel-Palestine question? He has raised some excellent points, and is advancing an extremely fluent argument encompassing most of the middle east. What has struck me over the past four or five years—and I wonder whether it has struck him as well—is that since the so-called Arab spring, the question of Israel has not been mentioned on the Arab streets. The question is not whether or not Israel is legitimate or illegitimate; it relates to the governance of the Arab countries themselves. Is it not incumbent on us to focus on that question of governance—of which the hon. Gentleman himself has just spoken so fluently—rather than sending ourselves down a rabbit hole and talking about the Israel-Palestine question, which is, let’s face it, distinct from the question of governance in the region?