Contribution
My Lords, the choice of who forms the Israeli Government is for the Israeli people and them alone. Our foreign policy is for our Government, and our legislation is for this Parliament. No British Jewish person should be held to account for the actions of another Government—an Israeli Government. Antisemitism, at too high a rate, is utterly repugnant and has no place in our communities. I reiterate what I have said on a number of occasions, and I hope that the Minister might take this forward: there should be the highest-level cross-party talks on increasing measures to tackle this scourge in our country.
That said, I agree with the Foreign Secretary’s comment in his Statement that the Labour Government have not done enough in response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the West Bank. Therefore, these Benches welcome the actions taken by 12 countries, including the United Kingdom, to act on ensuring that there is no impunity for the comprehensive disregard for the rule of law in the West Bank.
The Foreign Secretary referred to the time of the Oslo accords and the number of those who resided in the illegal settlements. That number is very high. But I want to go a little bit further back and quote the first speech by Lord Carrington, as Foreign Secretary in the Thatcher Government in 1979, in this Chamber. In this speech, he said of the West Bank that:
“The objective here must be full and genuine autonomy for these areas as a step towards determining their final status. Nothing would do more to help these negotiations, to build trust in the area, and to win the consent of the Palestinians than for Israel to cease the expansion of its settlements in the occupied territories”.—[Official Report, 22/5/1979; col. 240.]
Then, there were not much more than 15,000 settlers in the illegally occupied areas. Today, there are more than 750,000. The challenges ahead are enormous, but Lord Carrington got the prescription of the problem exactly right.
I have seen the impunity both for those who are in the illegally occupied territory and for those in the outposts. In September 2024, I visited the area and saw part of the destruction and the intimidation by illegal settlers in outposts in the West Bank that are illegal under Israeli law. Our sanctions will not make any difference there. On my return to this House, I called for action and an end to the impunity, because settler violence was the worst on record in the year leading up to 7 October, and it has got worse since.
If the established view across all parties in this House is that outposts are illegal under both Israeli and international law, and that settlements are illegal under international law, surely it is a natural position that UK law should not facilitate trade and investment with those illegal outposts. I do not understand those who are saying that we should not have our law respecting Israeli law.
Further, it is surely a natural position that, for those who facilitate settlements and outposts that are illegal under Israeli law, our law should ensure that both finance and violence by intimidation should also be illegal. My first-hand sight of the intimidation was on a particular occasion where the settler was South African and had secured and formalised his Israeli citizenship on the flight from South Africa.
Unfortunately, actions to ensure that there is no peace in Gaza and the West Bank are happening through a systematic approach by some of those outpost communities. Lord Carrington was right that the outposts and settlements were a hindrance and block to peace.
I ask the Minister how we in the United Kingdom will ensure that Hamas gangsters are prevented from being part of governance. We called for the IRGC to be proscribed and were, on occasions, frustrated that the previous Government refused to do so. We welcome this Government’s proscription of it.
We have also been supportive of the recognition of the state of Palestine. But, on the balance of ensuring that Hamas is not part of the governance, we need to ensure that there is good governance for Palestine, and that is why we were critical of the Government cutting development partnership support for the very governance and transparency for Palestine that we will need in the future.
The previous Government perpetuated a cut of 80% to ODA for Palestine, which this Government are continuing. I hope that the Minister might review this, to ensure that the UK’s support for good governance increases and does not continue to fall. The travesty of the Trump Administration’s failed humanitarian agency shows the need for there to be clarity, law and order, and good governance.
Finally, I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that the sanctions regime that will be put in place will ensure that all those involved in circumvention of the sanctions regime will be caught within it, so that there is no impunity for those within this country, under our law, to continue to support the expansion of outposts that are illegal under Israeli law.