Middle East
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S1M-3002, in the name of Alasdair Morgan, on the current situation in the middle east. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. Those members who wish to participate in the debate should press their request-to-speak buttons now.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament expresses its deep concern about the situation in the Middle East; recognises the key role of the United Nations and the rule of international law, and affirms that the immediate cessation of violence, the recognition and protection of human rights and the need for negotiation are essential in order to secure just and long lasting peace in the region.
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this motion today. In truth, we could have debated the subject on any occasion over the past 50 years or so, if not even before that, had the Parliament been in existence.
The area of the middle east on which I will concentrate is Israel and Palestine. It is a bitter irony that that area holds many sites that are sacred to some of the world's major religions—so much so that we call it the Holy Land. However, that is hardly an apt title in view of the many inhuman actions that have taken place there, both recently and in the past.
Over recent weeks, our television screens have been filled with images from Israel and the west bank. I will pick out two of them. The first is a picture of the Jenin refugee camp, although it was not what we would know as a camp; it was a town. The picture was of a town devastated as though by an earthquake, except that the destruction seemed to me to be far more complete than in many natural disasters and the usual international rescue organisations appeared to be being prevented or hampered from giving assistance by the Israeli army, rather than being assisted by the army as we would expect. Life in the camps was never a bed of roses, but the sights that we saw were an affront to human decency.
The second image is of an elderly Israeli woman, injured as a result of an explosion caused by a suicide bomber and lying in a hospital bed. On her body, she displayed a tattooed number from her days in the Auschwitz concentration camp. An old woman who had survived one of the worst blots on the record of 20th century civilisation surely had the right to live out her life in peace in a safe haven. Once again, she had been let down by civilisation in what should be the brave dawn of a new millennium.
Most of us are MSPs because we are committed to a cause or philosophy. No matter how passionate our commitments, we cannot begin to imagine what makes a young Palestinian man or woman strap a belt of explosives to their body and go into a bar or disco where people of their own age are having fun—young people with whom they should share their hopes for their neighbouring countries to grow and thrive. Instead of sharing that common vision, they blow themselves and their Israeli counterparts to bits.
We cannot imagine that, nor, I suspect, can we imagine the siege mentality with which so many Israelis have been inculcated over the past 50 years. Israel is a country whose geography makes it very vulnerable, whose border areas have been under frequent attack and whose recent civilian casualty rate makes our own, most similar experience in Northern Ireland pale into insignificance. Yet however little we can come to understand those viewpoints, we can say with certainty that the actions of the Israeli army, under the direction of Prime Minister Sharon, will not dry up the supply of would-be suicide bombers. Those actions are creating a reservoir of hatred and distrust of Israel among Palestinians that is threatening to poison the minds of further generations and will serve only to prolong Israel's sense of insecurity.
It is simply not good enough for former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to justify, as he did recently, some of Israel's actions by referring to atrocities that were carried out by Palestinians in 1947 and 1948—not that Israel's hands were entirely clean at that time, either. A policy that justifies the present simply by reference to past injustices, no matter how strongly felt, is no way to build a future.
We should be in no doubt that it will require considerable political, moral and personal courage for the leaders of both sides to move towards peace. The previous Israeli premier paid the price of failure with his political career and, some years before, the President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, paid with their lives. Both were killed for their commitment to a peaceful solution, and both were killed not by those with whom they sought to make peace but by extremists on their own side.
I hope that members will agree that peace will be secured only against a background of an Israeli state that is recognised by its immediate neighbours and an internationally recognised Palestinian state that exists within secure frontiers. Indeed, that is what the recent United Nations Security Council resolution 1397 called for. It is clear to most that peace will never be achieved as long as Israel continues to occupy, and develop settlements in, the territory that was seized in 1967.
I have tried to allow for the different pressures that the two groups in the conflict have been under, but I feel that we have a right to expect more from the state of Israel than we are getting. We have a right to expect more because of Israel's membership of the community of democratic nations. Way back in 1949, the UN Security Council passed resolution 69, which recommended that Israel be admitted to membership of the United Nations. It said:
"Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter".
There must be at least a question mark over the total accuracy of that judgment as applied to the current Israeli Government.
The European Union and, in particular, the United States must use their good offices and undoubted influence more energetically. We need to send a totally unambiguous signal to Mr Sharon that a continuation of his current policy is unacceptable. The United States of America gave Israel some £2 billion in aid last year. I therefore cannot believe that the US cannot bring more pressure to bear. President Bush—and any other politician who seeks to be his ally—would do well to realise that the immediate threat to peace in the entire region comes from the conflict on the west bank and in Gaza, not from the antics of Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the injustice to the Palestinians that is perceived by their Arab neighbours partly gives Saddam a platform on which to thrive.
There have been some small signs of progress in the past couple of days, but we know from past experience just how elusive real progress can be. This issue affects us all. Our historical connections with the administration of Palestine over much of the 20th century, the potential consequences on our economy from conflict in the middle east—consequences that we have experienced in reality in the past—and, most important of all, the common humanity that we share with all those who suffer on both sides of the conflict all mean that we must continue to do all that we can to bring the warring parties to the negotiation of a just settlement.
We move to open debate. I will allow speeches of up to four minutes.
I will not, as is customary, thank the member who secured the debate, but I will thank him for the tone of his comments. The upsurge in violence in the middle east is both horrifying and frightening. It is of great concern not only to the people of Israel but to everyone, including the people of Scotland. That latter group is the group to which I wish to address my remarks today.
For the record, however, I wish to start by stating that I object to this debate taking place. It is clear to me that we are having today's debate not because of the undoubted importance of the troubles in the middle east, nor because of the concern that we feel for those in the situation, nor because of the strong opinions that all sides in the conflict hold, but because of the SNP's obsession with the constitutional settlement. The SNP misses no opportunity to aggravate relations between the Scottish Parliament and Westminster. By doing that, the SNP does justice neither to this institution nor to the lives of the people of Scotland. Frankly, the SNP's actions diminish the concern that is felt for the situation that affects the people in the middle east.
I regret that Kenneth Macintosh said that. I will regret it even more if he genuinely believes it, because there is no one in this Parliament who believes anything other than that no boundary—devolved or reserved—demarcates humanity. We are all concerned about humanity in this debate. It has nothing at all to do with the constitutional settlement.
I appreciate Margo MacDonald's sentiments, and the tone of Alasdair Morgan's speech, but that does not take away from the fact that we have had two SNP slots today, one on the powers of the Parliament and one on a matter that is reserved to Westminster. Frankly, that is a waste of the Scottish Parliament's time. It reflects badly on us all, but it does not diminish the concern that has been expressed by individual members, nor the strong opinions that are held on all sides.
The issue that I wish to address is the impact that the conflict is having on our own communities, and the threat of the effect that the spiral of violence may have on our efforts to promote a culture of tolerance and understanding across ethnic divides.
As many members will be aware, my constituency of Eastwood is ethnically diverse. Among other communities, it is home to the largest section of the Jewish community in Scotland. Since the failure of the Camp David talks and the breakdown of the peace process, the upsurge in violence in Israel has been matched by rising alarm and anxiety in the Jewish community here. It is not just that many people have friends and family in Israel and that they are worried for their day-to-day safety—although that fear is real enough—but that we are in danger of importing the violence to Britain and to Scotland.
Many members will have received an information pack from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, in which our attention is drawn to the fact that the increase in terrorism and military activity in the middle east has been mirrored by a rise in anti-Semitic activity here. There have been attacks on synagogues in Glasgow and Dundee and there has been an increase in verbal abuse. I know from the number of people who have contacted me individually that there is a great deal of anxiety and unease in the wider population. During question time today, Margo MacDonald referred to the attack on Finsbury Park synagogue.
We are all fully entitled to hold and express strong opinions on the divisive and depressing problems that face the middle east, and to sympathise with Palestinian and Israeli people alike, but we also have a duty to take care when expressing those opinions that we do not exacerbate the situation or further inflame passions that run strongly in our communities. Ignorance is dangerous, and there is a level of ignorance about the state of Israel and the middle east that we would do well to challenge, rather than repeat. Many comments that I have heard on the television and radio have not reflected a balanced view, but have come from those who rush to express their prejudices. Is it any wonder that people who have heard those prejudices and suffered because of them in the past feel worried and alarmed?
We heard much during question time today about the importance of encouraging racial harmony and tackling intolerance and racism wherever they emerge. We have seen from the unfortunate example of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the French presidential election, and the recent publicity given to the British National Party in our country, the dangerous bigotry in our society, which can be tapped into by the unscrupulous or the unthinking.
There is not a politician here who can claim to know the path to peace in the middle east, but we can probably agree on this: the path to peace will be a political one. It will be achieved by people talking to one another, not fighting one another. I urge all politicians here to reflect on their own words and actions, and to have regard for the impact that those words will have, not just in the middle east, but on communities closer to home.
I do not think that I can refrain from raising the temperature in this debate. I do not accept that the tone of this debate should be set as Ken Macintosh suggested, because it is not good enough. The reason we have such disengagement from politics throughout the world—in particular by young people, but by all ages—is because of politicians' hypocrisy, in particular with regard to international relations.
It is important that we discuss what is going on in Palestine and throughout the middle east, because we are witnessing cold-blooded murder. We are witnessing state terror. I say to Ken Macintosh that it is from that point of view that I choose my words carefully, because they are legitimate descriptions of what is happening in that region of the world. It is hypocrisy that the western world, apparently, is preparing to engage in further bombing expeditions against Iraq—I say "engage in further" rather than "begin", because we have not stopped bombing Iraq since the end of the Gulf war. We are preparing for war against Iraq because of its ignorance of, or lack of willingness to abide by, UN resolutions.
In 1967, UN Security Council resolution 242 was passed, demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories. In 1973, UN Security Council resolution 338 was passed, again demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories. Today, we do not prepare to bomb Israel, but the United States of America continues to provide that state with the best military arsenal to carry out the attacks and massacres that have taken place in places such as Jenin.
We have a situation in which Iraq should prepare to be invaded because it refuses to allow in independent UN arms inspectors. However, when Israel refuses to allow independent UN investigators into the Jenin camp—not to establish that there was a massacre, but to establish the scale of the massacre—it receives soft words of condemnation but hard military exports from countries such as Britain and the US. We should be ashamed of that.
I believe in this debate. It is important that we are open and honest. Ariel Sharon is the architect of state terror. Ariel Sharon was guilty of crimes against humanity in Shatila and Sabra in 1982 and he is repeating those crimes against humanity in Jenin in 2002. We should be open and honest enough to face up to that. As far as the middle east is concerned, Ariel Sharon is not part of the solution; he is part of the problem.
I hope that when we discuss the situation in the middle east and the situation in Palestine, we are prepared to put ourselves on the side of a nation that has been illegally occupied since 1948—if the truth be told—and has been militarily occupied since 1967. That nation has been the subject of aggression and military assault of a type that, if it was happening in any other part of the western world, we would be preparing for military intervention on its behalf. I am afraid that it is time for angry words.
Usually, I commend motions such as this one and welcome the fact that we have a chance to have a debate on merit. On this occasion, I find nothing wrong with the wording of the motion and I congratulate Alasdair Morgan on the reasonable way in which he put his case on a distressing situation.
Kenny Macintosh had a point when he talked about the Parliament's wish to have a multicultural society and the fact that we want people in this country to live and work together and to get on well together. Because of the lack of informed comment in some instances, the debate could do more harm than good. That gives me some cause for worry.
I am sure that today's situation in the middle east fills us all with despair, including me and Tommy Sheridan, even though we might see things slightly differently. Over the past decade, there has been opportunity after opportunity—we have hoped for peace and thought that the situation would settle down—and then disappointment after disappointment.
In 1993, I was privileged to meet Prime Minister Rabin—Alasdair Morgan mentioned both him and President Sadat. One of the greatest tragedies in the middle east was that both those individuals' lives were taken by one of their own citizens. When we consider the good and bad on either side, we have to ask what the objective of each of those citizens was. Perhaps there was an underlying factor that demonstrates the difficulties that any of us will have in understanding the problems that are faced in the middle east.
There is an underlying hatred, perhaps going back to 1948 when the UN established the state of Israel—or even earlier. It seems to me that that is where the real problem and perhaps the longer-term solution lie. If the neighbouring countries accepted the 1948 agreement and acknowledged that Israel is there and will not go away, we could perhaps use our influence to make Israel pull back to its borders.
On several occasions over the past six or seven years, the Arab League has made it absolutely plain that the countries that it represents recognise Israel's legitimacy and right to survive.
To be perfectly honest, I find it extremely difficult to put my faith in any decisions made by Syria or Iraq. How could we get it into the Israelis' minds that all the members of the Arab League and the surrounding countries accept that position? The problem is that Israel's back is to the wall. We have to consider rationally how we get through to it.
In the months leading up to the Israeli army's horrendous involvement in the west bank, 466 Israelis, 314 of whom were civilians, were killed and almost 4,000 were seriously injured in terrorist attacks. I am afraid that when a state is faced with such a situation—
Will the member give way?
I do not have the time.
Given such a situation, perhaps the Israelis have grounds for their concerns. The fact is that Israel's first duty is to protect its citizens. However, it will ultimately have to respect the needs and requirements of the Palestinian people. Somewhere along the line, someone much wiser than I am will have to assist in that process. I would like to think that that will happen tomorrow, but I fear that it will happen many years from now.
We must follow two ground rules. First, legitimate criticism of the Israeli Government must not lead to anti-Semitism and there should not be anti-Muslim feelings or other expressions of racial hatred. We must vigorously ensure that that does not happen in our country. Secondly, Israel has the right to exist securely within its boundaries and not to be attacked, but the Palestinians also have a right to a homeland in which they can live securely. That must be the aim.
Terrorism can never be justified, but the way in which the Israelis have treated the Palestinians has created martyrs out of terrorists. It beggars belief that people have spent 50 years in refugee camps. In that respect, it is worth looking at some of the English chronicles of the late 1200s. Whereas we see Wallace as a hero, the English saw him as a terrorist. This is a question of different perceptions.
The Israeli settlements in the Palestinian areas are contrary to international law, which the Israeli Government has not recognised in a number of other respects. In the end, the Israelis will have to negotiate with Arafat. They may not like him and may consider him to be a dishonest rogue. However, if they do not negotiate with him, will they negotiate instead with Hamas or others who are even more hostile to them than Arafat is?
We must encourage and take encouragement from the moderate Israelis, who are numerous. I think that 190 reservists refused to serve outside the boundaries of the state of Israel and not all Israelis necessarily support the exclusion of the UN team from Jenin.
To consider the matter in a cold-blooded way, the cost of the whole blockade and the war is dire indeed. The unemployment rate and level of economic activity in Palestine are now very much worse than they were. The European Union has a vested financial interest, in that our taxes went to construct a lot of the infrastructure, such as ports and airports, which the Israelis have destroyed. Who will pay to repair them all? We are Israel's biggest trading partner, but the trading agreement with Israel says that
"respect for human rights and democratic principles is an essential condition"
of the agreement. The European Union must get together with the United States to put pressure on the parties concerned and achieve some negotiation and the UN must be involved thereafter.
We must pursue the concept of the sovereignty of the individual as well as the sovereignty of the nation state. Individuals must be protected from their Governments and from multinational organisations. We can develop the United Nations system as a way of helping individuals who are not being looked after properly by their nation state.
I declare an interest as vice-convener of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on Palestine.
In the document circulated to members by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, there are references to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I must point out to members that Israel is not a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that any reference to the declaration in the document is therefore fraudulent and bogus.
Let me tell members about one summer. On 19 June, five soldiers were kidnapped and shot. On 22 June, two policemen were shot and killed. On 27 June, a suitcase bomb killed 10 civilians at Lydda airfield. On 30 June, a car bomb at the embassy in Rome killed one policeman and two cleaners. On 2 July, 30 officers were killed in the officer's club in Haifa. On 9 July, a military police jeep machine-gunned and killed four people. On 26 July, the King David Hotel was bombed, killing 128 and injuring 97. On 29 July, two non-commissioned officers were kidnapped, tortured and killed and their bodies were booby-trapped and hanged in an orange grove.
That was not last summer. That was the summer of 1946 and the casualties concerned were British servicemen and Government officers. The newspapers of this country called the people who carried out those actions—members of the Irgun, the Hagana and the Stern gang—terrorists. Israel was built on terrorism. Unfortunately, like other states built in that fashion, it resorts to the use of terrorism on a regular basis.
I was accused last week of breaking Israeli law. I will say this. In the state of Israel I did not break the law and, to my understanding, the rule of law of the state of Israel does not run in the Palestinian Authority areas. I committed no offence.
The words "occupation" and "occupied" have been used a number of times today. There are the occupied territories from 1948, the occupied territories from the war in 1967, the occupied territories from the war in 1973 and the occupied territories that have been occupied since 27, 28 and 29 March this year. Those areas are administered by the Palestinian Authority and are recognised as such by the United Kingdom Government and by the Israeli Government.
If I had recognised the rule of law of the state of Israel when I was in occupied Palestine, I would have been legitimising the military aggression and occupation. To do so is to acquiesce in the face of ethnic cleansing, which I have witnessed. It is also to remain unmoved at the relentless degradation and humiliation of an entire people, regardless of their religion. Those people are discriminated against for their culture and a third of that population has effectively been under house arrest since 27 March.
On Tuesday last week, I visited the Jenin camp. I visited the hospital, which used to be well equipped—the equipment was provided principally by the European Union. Now, however, the hospital has been reduced to a medical centre with less equipment than my dentist has. I watched an emergency operation being carried out on a nine-year-old boy. Two days before, his house had been hit by an Israeli rocket. He had lost an arm, a shoulder, a leg and the side of his face. His uncle was in the other bed and was providing a blood transfusion, as the Israelis had mined and booby-trapped the blood bank at Jenin hospital. Thread from a Singer sewing machine was used because there was no surgical thread. The Kuwaiti Government offered to fly in an air ambulance to fly the boy out to Amman, where he would have survived, but the Israelis declared the sky over Jenin to be an area of military operations and the air ambulance was not allowed in. The boy was dead by 4 o'clock that afternoon.
What happened in Jenin was an attempt to break the spirit of an independent and free people. To use Merkava tanks, M1 Abrams tanks, F-16s, Apache and Black Hawk helicopters is a war crime. Scots must take a stand against crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Sergeant Shay Biran from Hod Hasharon, whose military identity in the Israeli army is 6994014, said:
"I am no longer willing to take an active part in the violent, needless and immoral policy conducted by my government … The [Israeli] occupier has been applying consistent violence and a policy of repression for 35 years, while yet excising it from the public consciousness, and people don't understand that [Palestinian] violence is in fact counter-violence … If I were to go to the territories, I'd be contributing to the state's destruction (not merely moral, but above all, concrete and tangible); by refusing, I am trying to save the state from self-destructing."
Those are the words of a combat medic in the Israeli army, who served four months in prison. We should listen to him.
The issue is a reserved matter, but I welcome the opportunity to give my opinion on it. As the convener of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on Palestine, I thank Alasdair Morgan for that opportunity.
I have supported the Palestinian people since I first learned of their struggle to establish an independent Palestinian state. I have been involved since the early 1980s.
The extent to which the international community has singularly failed to use its influence to urge a lasting and meaningful solution in the middle east has never failed to amaze me. There is a two-state solution, which I support. There should be a safe, secure and independent Palestine and a safe, secure and independent Israel.
Often, it is said that Palestinians are people without a land and that they are the victims of the victims. That is what makes the struggle so hard to resolve. The fact is that the middle east conflict arises from the denial of the national rights of the Palestinian people.
Recent events in Ramallah and Jenin have shocked the world. Sharon's foolishness in trying to destroy Palestinian will shows that he fails to understand Palestinian resolve. Recently, one of his generals boasted that he could crush Palestinian resistance. He compared it to an egg, which he crushed in his hand.
Shamefully, Sharon is using 11 September to convince the world that his misbehaviour is justified and that he is fighting terrorism. Sharon has failed to understand that the lesson of history is that violence breeds violence and that his attempts to demolish the infitada and the Palestinian National Authority will fail, unless he negotiates. Nobody is convinced that Israel is defending itself. The whole world is shocked by the intensity of the Israeli aggression that has destroyed mosques, churches, schools and hospitals. Electricity and water supplies have been cut. Ambulances have not been allowed to collect the injured. Corpses have been left to rot.
Such lawlessness by the Israeli army is against every human rights agreement and convention that we can think of. There is indiscriminate shooting of civilians. Literally thousands of eye-witnesses will testify to Israel's brutality in the Jenin camp. It is alarming to think that, over the past few days, the UN has delayed in getting eye-witnesses in to account for what happened in Jenin.
I commend the many progressive Israelis who have been brave enough to speak out against their Government, because they know that, even if they are victims, no right-thinking person can justify treating another race as the Israelis treat the Palestinians by denying them their national rights.
Israel is occupying land that does not belong to it; the position is not the other way round. It is fundamental to understand that Israel is the aggressor and not the Palestinians. Israel continues to build and to settle new citizens while the numbers in Palestinian refugee camps grow.
How can there be a serious negotiation over a two-state settlement when Palestinians who were forced to flee their country do not have the right of return and have not been offered it under any set of negotiations? Afif Safieh, the Palestinian delegate to the UK, was born in Jerusalem but is banned from entering its territory. Israel continues to build new settlements on land that does not belong to it and expects there to be an agreement. Palestinians have accepted 22 per cent of the land. Afif Safieh said:
"I believe they have been unreasonably reasonable in their approach."
There should be a third-party force in the negotiations to force a peace settlement for everyone in the middle east.
Many Scots understand the conflict, but many others might think that the issue is complex. Those who understand the conflict have a duty to raise the awareness of others. Of all the international conflicts, this is the one that can be resolved, because it has a solution.
I know that many Glaswegians feel strongly about the situation. In fact, the lord provost of Glasgow has spoken out about the issue. Many Scottish musicians, including Deacon Blue, are trying to put together humanitarian aid initiatives by offering their musical services. I hope that members will look for an initiative that they can practically support. The best thing that we can do is to bring humanitarian aid.
I believe that, to make a point, there should be a short boycott of Israeli goods. We should all work towards an independent Palestinian state that is based on the west bank and Gaza strip and exists beside a safe and secure Israel. That will create the prospect of getting peace in the rest of the region.
The motion refers to
"the key role of the United Nations and the rule of international law."
This debate is not only about the middle east. The repercussions of what is happening in what we call the middle east will be felt throughout the globe. In the future, when we, as a world society, face the human rights problems that are bound to arise because of the changing balance of power between east and west—by which I mean the far east and our west—we will need the United Nations.
Therefore, it is imperative that the UN should not be degraded in the eyes of people all over the world as it is being degraded by the refusal of the Israelis to recognise the UN resolutions to which members have referred. America bears a large responsibility for what has happened because we all know the practicality of the situation. If it were known that America would not veto security council sanctions against Israel for its disobedience of UN resolutions, we could start the ball rolling.
Ken Macintosh talked about a path to peace. If America did not use its Security Council veto, that would be part of that path to peace. Any pressure that the British Government or other permanent members of the security council can bring to bear on America must be brought now. The situation is urgent and serious, not only for the humanitarian aspects that Lloyd Quinan described, but for the global implications.
There are other consequences. It is not merely that we diminish the UN at our peril. Yesterday, a Libyan friend told me that he had spoken on the phone to his family in Libya, who had expressed their part of the world's disgust at, and distrust of, British hypocrisy. He is a Libyan Scot who has lived here for ages and his family are young Scots. How do we build the sort of multicultural harmony of which we have talked if Arab people such as my Libyan friend know that our Government is discriminating against Arabs? That is how he sees the situation and I do not think that he should see it any other way. I do not think that there is any other interpretation of the part that our Government has played. It has tried to play a middle role but there is no middle role—illegality is being practised against the Palestinians and we should take their side.
I spoke to Saudis yesterday, who told me that, although some people here think that it would be impractical to have a boycott of Israeli goods as there was a boycott of South African goods, in the Gulf area there is an effective boycott of everything American. Young Gulf Arabs do not want to know about America and do not trust America. Does everyone understand the seriousness of having a whole region of the world totally opposed to the world's only superpower? I am sure that everyone in the chamber understands why we must take every possible step to break down the total distrust that is growing between what we call the middle east and the far east and the west.
We are dividing the world. There are areas of the world that will look with dismay at our attitude towards the middle east, which is that our sanctions on Iraq are legitimate because it has ignored UN resolutions and has not allowed UN weapons inspectors but that it is fine for Israel to refuse to accept a UN fact-finding mission without the imposition of sanctions.
Does Margo MacDonald agree that the comparison between the only practising democracy in the middle east with a state such as Iraq is wholly invidious?
I regret that the only practising democracy in the middle east should have put itself in the same position as a despotic regime such as Iraq. That is the tragedy of the situation. We have to look at the situation as it is, not as it might once have been.
Israel should act like a democracy.
I am hearing from a colleague that Israel might not be a democracy, but I do not have time to investigate that just now. I am trying only to convey the feelings that have been expressed to me by Arab friends.
Ken Macintosh talked about the paths to peace, but Israel must send the same signal that was sent by the UN. Israel must accept the right of the Palestinians to have a state side by side with Israel. Somebody somewhere has to say this sometime: the people who chose to emigrate to the settlements to make a better life for their families—and I appreciate that that might have been their only aim—may stay where they are, but they will be living in the state of Palestine, not the state of Israel.
As the debate started early and there are still a number of members to be called, I would be prepared to consider a motion without notice to extend the debate to 17:45, although we will be finished before that. The minister has kindly agreed to that suggestion.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended to 5.45 pm.—[Alasdair Morgan.]
Motion agreed to.
I congratulate Alasdair Morgan on securing an important debate. To members such as Ken Macintosh, who are concerned that it touches on a reserved area, I say that such concerns should be dwarfed by the atrocities and the abuse of human rights that are being perpetrated against the Palestinian people under the banner of the so-called war against terrorism. I would be ashamed of a Scottish Parliament that would allow suffering on such a scale to go by without a comment from the elected representatives of the Scottish people. It is right that the Scottish Parliament should debate such issues.
Does John McAllion agree that, while it is right for elected representatives such as ourselves to have strong opinions and to express those opinions, it is misleading to think that the Scottish Parliament has a role to play when we have elected members in Westminster whose role it specifically is to deal with foreign affairs?
Our role is to be the voice of the Scottish people and if we cannot express the opinions that are out there, we are in a bad state.
There are those who, like Phil Gallie, have argued that Israel's actions in Palestine are justified by the attacks of the suicide bombers. I say quite unequivocally that any attack on unarmed civilians, whether by suicide bombers in the street or B-52 bombers a mile high in the sky, can never be justified and should be condemned by everyone.
Almost daily, I receive by e-mail accounts of the kind of atrocities that Israeli spokespersons deny every day on television. E-mails can tell lies, but photographs do not. One set of photographs in particular, which was e-mailed to me and probably to other members of the Parliament, shows a young Palestinian who has been stopped by members of the Israeli defence forces, forced onto the ground and stripped. The photographs show two members of the defence forces holding the young Palestinian on the ground while a third one shoots him in the head.
Those are individual acts of terror, but on a very small scale they make human the much wider acts of terror that are being perpetrated by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. The crime sheet against Ariel Sharon and other Israeli governments is long. Members have referred to it time and again in the debate. Israel has illegally, and against UN resolutions, occupied Palestinian and Arab land. Israel has established across Palestinian land a network of more than 140 illegal settlements—in excess of 400,000 illegal settlers are on Palestinian land. Israel has built a road network in Palestine exclusively for the use of its illegal settlers and that road network is banned to the Palestinian people.
Israel humiliates Palestinian people daily at road blocks that it sets up exclusively to stop Palestinians moving freely about their own country. As Lloyd Quinan said, Israel sent in F16s, tanks, helicopter gunships and bulldozers to wreak havoc and destruction in large parts of Palestinian towns. As we speak, large parts of towns such as Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramalla, and Nablus, which is twinned with my own city of Dundee, lie in ruins. They have been devastated by Israeli attacks.
In successive attacks against Palestine, the Israelis have interned without trial thousands of young Palestinians. Nobody knows what is happening to those young Palestinians. As we stand to debate the issue today, it is alleged that Israel is torturing many of them. Israel has imposed illegal curfews on an entire people. The stench of massacre rises from the ruins of Jenin and yet the Israelis deny access to Jenin to those who want to find out what happened in that place.
In describing the situation, I am describing what is going on at this very moment in the land of Palestine. I am not, in any way, being anti-Semitic. In Dundee, I have often shared platforms with representatives of the Jewish community when we have spoken against anti-Semitism, against racism and against fascism. Indeed, I have had the walls of my house daubed with a swastika because of the stand that I take against anti-Semitism.
I simply want to direct the attention of those who seek to defend Israel to the small part of the Israeli population who stand up and point out the crimes of their own Government. If we want to identify with Israelis, those are the Israelis with whom we should identify. We should be saying that what the state of Israel is doing to the state of Palestine can never be justified. If there is to be a two-state solution in the middle east, those two states must have equal status. We cannot have one state controlled by the other.
I congratulate my colleague Alasdair Morgan on securing this important debate and on his eloquent speech. I also congratulate the many members from all the parties who have made eloquent contributions to the debate.
The Scottish Parliament is at its most dignified when we discuss international issues. I wish that we did that more often. I do not want to go down the road that was advocated by Ken Macintosh, who wants to stick to parochial issues. I am sure that other members also do not want to do that. The Scottish Parliament is Scotland's voice. Many people to whom I have spoken are extremely concerned about what is happening in the middle east. We would be abdicating our responsibility as Scotland's political forum if we did not discuss those concerns.
I was at Aberdeen's mosque last Friday evening. My colleague Angus Robertson MP and I fielded questions from about 70 or 80 people who were in the mosque for prayers. The people present represented about 28 nationalities. Almost every question, in over an hour and a half, was on the topic of the middle east. I do not want to go back to the mosque, look those people in the face and say that we are not willing to discuss the middle east crisis.
I would also not want to go and speak to the Jewish community and say that we were not willing to discuss the middle east crisis in the Scottish Parliament. People cannot believe that the topic is not being discussed more frequently in political circles in Scotland and that it is not higher on the public agenda. Today's debate fulfils an important obligation to those people.
We are all appalled, at what is an early stage of the 21st century, when we look at our television screens and see the horrific scenes in the middle east. As many members have said, Israel's behaviour is despicable, but there has been unforgivable violence on both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides. We are all tearing our hair out about the fact that, in this day and age, people do not realise that tit-for-tat killings get us nowhere; they only build up reservoirs of resentment and hatred that will last for years. We are all concerned that Israel is trying not only to catch the terrorists in the Palestinian state, but to dismantle that state.
The SNP supports the UN Security Council resolution that requires the withdrawal of Israel's troops to the pre-1967 boundaries, the Arab world's acceptance of the legitimacy of the Israeli state and the establishment of a viable, self-governing and independent Palestinian state. I believe that Scotland has a role in trying to achieve that. However small that role is, we should play it and do our utmost to achieve peace in the middle east and throughout the world. Many Scots, including Lloyd Quinan, have visited the middle east during the recent crisis. I pay tribute to Professor Derrick Pounder from Dundee, who went with Amnesty International and performed some autopsies.
We should learn from Norway. The Norway accord of 1993 showed that small countries can participate in some way in trying to achieve peace. Scotland should play any role that it can in trying to achieve peace in the middle east. Let us all hope that the rule of international law prevails.
It is absolutely appropriate that we should discuss the middle east this afternoon in Edinburgh. We are a young democracy, but we have something to say. The debate is being webcast. Given the number of hits there have been for previous debates, I am sure that people from all over the world will find out what we are saying. We can send a message in that way.
We have heard a great deal in the debate. It is hard for us to understand the vengeance and the spiral of atrocities that we see on our television screens. Although they seem very far away, they are not. Donald Gorrie correctly mentioned that Israel has a right to exist. Equally, the Palestinians have a right to justice and to a homeland. Richard Lochhead made a balanced speech. He was right to point out that there have been appalling atrocities on both sides. There is no dialogue. If the communities can be made to talk to each other and to work together, a lasting peace can be built.
Our role is to condemn violence loudly and to strive mightily for peace in any way that we can, whether that is through advocacy or lobbying organisations. The point about striving for peace is that one must have hope that it will work. I do not know the middle east and I have never been to Palestine, but I know Northern Ireland extremely well because my wife comes from Armagh. In the 20 or so years that I have known Armagh, the community was at one point blown to bits and close personal friends of my in-laws have been murdered. However, the situation there today is different. Some people might say that the situation in Northern Ireland is imperfect, but at least it is a radical improvement on the one that I knew 20 years ago. The situation has changed because ordinary people said, "Enough is enough. We will not have this any longer." I know people who are reaching out across the sectarian divide and working for the greater good.
There is hope. Events can happen for the better if all good people work together. I will close with a phrase from "The Pilgrim's Progress" that has everlastingly stuck in my mind: hope is the key.
Inevitably, the debate has provoked understandable passion and deep concern among members. No right-minded person could feel anything other than deeply troubled at the truly terrible scale of human suffering and the dire situation brought about as a result of the current conflict in the middle east. Individuals in the chamber and beyond clearly have strong feelings on the issue. Our first thoughts must be for the victims of the dreadful situation and their families. The priority should be to cease all violence, to relieve the human suffering and to work to build lasting peace in the region. That can be achieved only through dialogue, trust and mutual respect among all the parties. Violence is not an answer—it will only prolong the suffering and spread the seeds of distrust and doubt.
The media have made us aware of the terrible experiences that people have endured during the present crisis, some of which have been graphically highlighted in the debate. Any caring individual would want such experiences to be brought to an end. That is why I welcome the initiative in which UK and US wardens will oversee the detention of the six Palestinians who are held in a Palestinian authority prison in Jericho.
Under the agreement, Israel has withdrawn its forces from Ramallah and Yasser Arafat is free to travel and resume work inside and outside the occupied territory.
Will the minister give way?
I do not wish to take an intervention, thank you.
It is vital that Israel and the Palestinian authorities build on the agreement and take further steps to reduce tension and rebuild mutual trust and confidence.
The Scottish Executive has no constitutional locus, nor an electoral mandate, to formulate policy or make policy statements on foreign affairs. The Scots who have been entrusted with that role—those Scots to whom the electorate gave their trust in the recent general election—are our members of Parliament at Westminster. Westminster has Scottish MPs from all the main political parties in Scotland, who are able to speak on such issues, not only from the floor of the House of Commons and in committees, but around the Cabinet table. The Secretary of State for Scotland and many other Scots who hold Cabinet positions ensure that Scotland's voice is heard and helps to shape foreign policy at the UK level. Full note of the statements that members have made today regarding the appalling circumstances in the middle east has been taken. I will ensure that the Official Report of the debate is passed to Helen Liddell at the Scotland Office and to Jack Straw at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Meeting closed at 17:22.