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Middle East
4.09 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Triesman): My Lords, I beg leave to repeat a Statement made in another place by my honourable friend Dr Kim Howells. The Statement is as follows:
“In these very difficult times for the Middle East, I welcome this chance to update the House on British activity and policy. The United Kingdom is gravely concerned by the escalating crisis in Lebanon. Not only does it pose a serious threat to the relationship between the Israeli and Lebanese Governments but it threatens the wider security of the region, and it is causing huge harm to the civilian populations, with casualties mounting on both sides. We offer our condolences to the Governments of Lebanon and Israel for the losses they have suffered, and to the families of all those affected. “The United Kingdom is committed to helping to resolve this crisis. The Prime Minister has spoken to Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, and the Foreign Secretary has spoken to the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni. We appreciate the pressures that both Governments are under at this very difficult time, but both have a responsibility to help to end this crisis. “Our priority must be to create conditions to allow a ceasefire and to explore quickly how the international community might facilitate a peaceful, diplomatic resolution, guaranteed perhaps by the deployment of an international force into the area. Ultimately, the only way to achieve a sustainable solution to the situations in both Gaza and Lebanon is to address the root17 July 2006 : Column 1028
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My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.19 pm
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating this important and somewhat gloomy Statement. This is a sombre moment, not just for the Middle East peace process and the road map but for the wider stability of the whole region and, indeed, of the world and for all of us. As the fighting expands, it can obviously have an impact far beyond either Lebanon or Gaza. It can have an impact on global stability, on oil prices—we remain far too dependent on oil—and on financial markets. Indeed, it is already doing so.
In the face of the immediate crisis, I am sure that the Minister will agree that there is little point in spending time finger-pointing about who started this particular round of horror and for what reason and so on, but there is every need to halt the spiralling cycle of killing, rocketing, bombing and kidnapping that has been going on.
We need to ask, first, about British nationals who want to leave. The Minister gave the position very fully in the Statement. Can British nationals get easy access with their travel documents to the authorities who can arrange departure by sea? Have the Israelis given a specific all-clear that there will be no molesting or interference? Are further helicopter airlifts possible, given the obvious danger of the Hezbollah operatives, who are all over Lebanon—not just in the south—and could inflict damage?
Is the Minister aware
that Hezbollah has been planning this attack for five months, as
confirmed by comment in Beirut, and that it has been shipping in huge
volumes of weapons? I gather from the latest estimate from both sides
and not just the Israeli side that those weapons include 12,000
Katyusha missiles, which have a range of about 20 to 25 kilometres, and
other missiles which, in some cases, have a considerably longer range?
In all this, Hezbollah is getting full personnel support from
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, who appear to be present in southern
Lebanon in some numbers. The aim of this
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Does the Minister also agree that, whether or not one says that it is provoked, the immediate Israeli response not only is inclined to be—indeed, is—disproportionate but can also be said to be flawed? It is very difficult to understand. Can the Minister explain how bombing the life out of Beirut, closing the airport, frightening the lives out of Lebanese citizens as they flee and, in some appalling cases, even gunning them down as they flee, can possibly make it easier for the elected Lebanese Government—a young Government struggling to do their best—to grapple with Hezbollah, the serpent in Lebanon's midst? Those Lebanese citizens might be said to have been on the same side as Israel, or at least to have had the same enemy—namely, Hezbollah. Lebanon has been trying for a year to handle the state within a state, and the bombing will make that much harder. I hope that, in our discussions with the parties, we will point out that fact.
Is not one very serious conclusion from the past few days—it is an ominous conclusion for the very future of Israel—that, when it comes to weapons technology, the Israelis may have lost their famed and hitherto unchallengeable superiority? There has been a colossal miniaturisation of very powerful weapons, combined with vast cash resources from oil-rich Iran flowing into weapons and support for Hezbollah. If it has not already done so, that will have an equalising military impact, as the Israeli military is now finding out to its dismay. Does that not suggest that, in the end, the Israelis will have to talk and negotiate and perhaps discuss the release of prisoners and detainees, rather than fruitlessly bombing and shelling?
As to the Gaza situation—the other ugly pattern of development—here we have a major humanitarian crisis. As in all modern advanced societies, but in developing ones as well, the effect of cutting off electricity by bombing the generating stations is to cut off the water supplies, medical supplies, traffic controls and, indeed, the entire pattern on which an urban existence depends. What can we do to ensure that assistance continues to get through to the Palestinians and that the electricity supplies are further restored? I gather that there has been some restoration and I hope that there can be more.
Meanwhile, in St Petersburg, the G8 leaders are broadly saying—I do not want to reduce it to a cliché—that they hope that better counsel will prevail. They have talked about an international force returning to the Lebanon or expanding in the Lebanon/Israel border area. One has to ask: what on earth can that do while the fighting and the missile firing continues? The answer is, of course, very little. The time for that may come, but it is not the solution to the immediate killing and destruction.
Is the prime,
direct task now for our Government and other Governments to tell the
Israelis that overreaction will be counterproductive and that if they
make enemies of Lebanon, their neighbour and the only other democracy
in the region, that will lead
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4.27 pm
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, I endorse much of what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, has said. It is clear that we now face a potential for expansion of the Israel/Palestine conflict into a broader regional conflict. We on these Benches recognise that the Prime Minister has been expressing that view in Washington for some time. Indeed, the Prime Minister was right to argue, as he did to President Bush on many occasions, that any action in Iraq had to be taken in parallel with pursuing active negotiations on the road map for Israel and Palestine. It is a tragedy that the United States resisted that advice.
We have now lost five and a half years in the Israel/Palestine peace process. There is an underlying ambiguity about how far the Government of Israel or the Administration of the United States were committed to a two-state solution and how far they were prepared to accept that we were edging towards a greater Israel with settlement building continuing in the West Bank and with continued impoverishment of the Palestinians. Does the Minister accept that Israel can be secure in the long run only if it finds a way to live in peace with its neighbours and that the only way to secure peace with its neighbours is to have a two-state solution with a viable Palestine? We are now moving further away from that rather than towards it.
We on these Benches are particularly worried about the perceptions in Washington under the current Administration. Condoleezza Rice's remarks about the right of Israel to defend itself as a sovereign state do not seem to be helpful in the current situation. We are much concerned about those who see this as part of a general war on terror in which different terrorist groups—Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, groups in Kashmir and Indonesia and heaven knows where else—are lumped together into a broad war on Islam, which one sometimes gets from some neoconservatives in the United States. Those who said three or four years ago that the road to Jerusalem lies through Baghdad now assume that it has to lie through regime change in Damascus and Tehran as well, although we make no excuses for the current regimes in Syria and Iran.
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We recognise that the attempt to redraw the entire structure of the Middle East by the Project for the New American Century was flawed from the outset and unachievable. The disproportionate response from Israel is counterproductive. Every survey of strategic bombing and major bombing campaigns, from the US’s strategic survey of bombing in the Second World War through to post-Vietnam surveys, shows that bombing hardens resistance and increases bitterness. Hezbollah, after all, grew in influence and local prestige out of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Bombing it again is not the way to weaken Hezbollah’s position.
We must be concerned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza does not worsen. We must also be concerned to ensure that Israeli efforts to cripple the Palestinian state, administration and infrastructure are stopped. If we are to have some hope of a viable Palestinian partner, we must acknowledge that it was a crucial mistake to refuse at least to talk to Hamas when it was democratically elected as the Government of Palestine.
How closely are we liaising with other states on the evacuation of British citizens? Do we have enough helicopters? As my noble friend Lord Dholakia has just reminded me, what is the situation for British citizens of dual nationality? That is a common situation for people in the Lebanon. Are we actively engaged with it?
Will the Minister give some assurance that Britain is taking active steps towards securing what must be, given the difficulties that we have in persuading Washington to see the complex problems of the Middle East from our perspective, an EU initiative? The Prime Minister has on a number of occasions suggested that what we most need is a regional conference to deal with the problems of the Middle East as a whole. Does he intend to revive that?
4.30 pm
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their observations. There is a global risk of instability in oil and finance markets. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, that tonight would not be the best occasion for a post mortem or finger pointing. That would not be useful at all.
I start with the noble Lords’
questions about the evacuation. The efforts of the Ministry of Defence
and the Royal Navy have been quite exceptional. I pay tribute to them
in this House this afternoon. My right honourable friend Adam Ingram
has taken the role of overall military co-ordination, and Brigadier
Jacko Page is on the ground ensuring that the arrangements work. I have
mentioned that two destroyers are offshore; each can take about 350
people on deck. The aim would be to get people to Cyprus in a 12-hour
crossing. HMS “Illustrious” and HMS
“Bulwark” are, as I have said, going towards the eastern
Mediterranean. Between them, they can lift many thousands of people;
they are huge vessels. I hope noble Lords will allow me to say only
that there
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We are trying to arrange for coaches to get people from designated points to the dockside. That should be a secure arrangement, which is one of the reasons a military team is scoping it all. We are in close touch with a large number of people. We cannot tell exactly how many British citizens were in the Lebanon when this started—that applies to those with dual nationality in exactly the same way as single nationality. The numbers could exceed 10,000. We do not know the numbers of other nationalities for which we have undertaken some responsibilities, such as the Australians and Canadians.
Briefly, a large number of vessels are queuing to get in. The port sides are damaged. In some cases, the vessels—aircraft carriers, for example—have extremely high sides. You cannot simply put up walkways. Getting people off the quayside and on to these ships will be a difficult logistical task, but work is going ahead rapidly. There is no panic; the Royal Navy being visible offshore has given a good deal of reassurance, including to people to whom I have been speaking in the past 24 hours. I hope I made the point that there is a lot of coordination with other nations.
To move on to some wider political issues, the Government, and the Governments of other countries, are aware of the rapid armament of Hezbollah. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that Hezbollah and Hamas engage in terror: they are terrorist organisations that pursue policies of terror, which puts stability in the region at great risk. It would be foolish to think otherwise. However, despite the fact that they do so, it is vital that the Israeli Government respond in a way that is not disproportionate. The G8 called on Israel,
- “to exercise utmost restraint,
seeking to avoid casualties among innocent civilians and damage to
civilian infrastructure and to refrain from acts that would destabilise
the Lebanese Government”.
Both noble Lords asked about assistance
to the Palestinians. We are working to provide money through a
mechanism that we believe to be reliable. We have been contributing
growing amounts through the temporary international mechanism since 17
June and another £12 million was pledged recently. We believe we
must support the Palestinian people and help to provide for their basic
needs. On 25 April,
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It is also essential that the connection to the Israeli grid, which has now begin, continues. It supplies some power, but it is not enough. Damage to the power station has resulted in everything that was described by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Pumping sewage and many other services are critical for ordinary, decent life and we look to see the repairs to that system completed as fast as possible. In the mean time, it is right that connections to the Israeli grid should be made to improve the input of power, which currently varies between three to 18 hours a day.
I do not accept that the G8 was just words. An unusual group of people came together and agreed on a forceful statement, which would not necessarily have happened in other circumstances. All these things suggest the desirability of an early debate, and it is for the business managers of the House to consider that. I am not averse to it, which I hope adds a word of encouragement without disrupting the work of the business managers. I believe that a good, open, frank debate on this matter would be extremely useful.
4.39 pm
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, my noble friend has expressed his gratitude to the British forces trying to help those British citizens who want to leave Beirut and Lebanon to do so. I hope he will be able also to express our gratitude to Her Majesty’s Ambassador in Beirut, James Watt, who, together with his very able staff, is struggling in difficult circumstances. I hope we can offer the diplomats there our support.
My noble friend mentioned the role of Egypt in the repeated Statement. He said that the British Government supported the mediation of Egypt between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the militias holding Corporal Shalit. He went on to say that the British Government offered assistance. Will the Minister clarify that? He stated the view that it is not possible to talk directly with Hamas, but supported those who are doing so through this mediation process, and has offered further support from the British Government. Does that mean that there has been some modification to the British Government’s view on talking to Hamas, and, if so, would the same mediation be supported for the two Israeli soldiers held in Lebanon, who are widely believed to be held by Hezbollah? Many of us believe that it is not possible to have a successful resolution of this potentially appalling situation in the Middle East unless some talks go on with those who have hitherto been earmarked as beyond the pale for such discussions.
Lord
Triesman: My Lords, I am very grateful to my
noble friend Lady Symons for her congratulations, which I will readily
convey to James Watt. I have spoken to him, as noble Lords can imagine.
He and
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On who is talking to whom, I do not think that there is a modification of view. The Government’s position remains that we do not seek to talk to organisations that have espoused terrorism and argued that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map. That is their position, which is why we will not talk to them. They can remedy that very easily, and should do so. It is obviously important through intermediaries to try to find ways of getting some sort of discussion going. It is likely that intermediaries will have a greater impact on them than we might, particularly the Egyptian Government, who seem to have those links. I say cautiously, because I say it out of partial ignorance, that I do not think they have the same links with Hezbollah as they do with Hamas, but, none the less, there are those who do. The organisation should release all the Israeli soldiers it holds. It should desist from violence and the Israelis should act proportionately.
Baroness D'Souza: My Lords, if the conflict escalates to the point where an attack on Iran is considered possible or even likely, what will be the British Government’s attitude?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, no attack on Iran is contemplated.
Lord Dykes: My Lords, does the Minister agree that it was disappointing that, because of American unwillingness, the G8 summit did not respond to the French proposal for a simultaneous ceasefire on all sides?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I understand—I was not in St Petersburg—that a number of ideas were canvassed and a good deal of creative work was done before the final statement was produced. Those ideas were thought through by the Sherpa teams working in the background for the G8 leaders. The G8 statement was not just endorsed by the leaders, but endorsed with some enthusiasm. None of them felt that they had been knocked back or set back and it is worth noting that in their own press statements they expressed some enthusiasm for it.
One of the key reasons for that enthusiasm is that as regards Lebanon and Gaza it is possible to see in the statement specific requirements expressed by G8 leaders, which, in my view, touch all the bases needed to stabilise the position. I will not go through them all because of time and other questions that noble Lords may wish to ask, but I strongly recommend that noble Lords look at the set of requirements that the G8 as the leading economies in the world placed on all the parties. I believe that noble Lords will see that the requirements are as strict and as stringent on both sides of the dispute as they should be in these circumstances.
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Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, on Gaza, does my noble friend agree that food, fuel, natural gas, medicines and electricity generators have passed from Israel to Gaza in recent days? Does he further agree that although evacuation from Lebanon has been mentioned, there should equally be evacuation plans—possibly not carried out immediately—of British nationals from Israel?
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