This week, in a House of Lords debate on the United States’ proposals for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, multiple Conservative peers raised their concerns about Palestinian incitement and textbooks that “glorify suicide bombing”.
CFI Officer Baroness Altmann CBE highlighted that Palestinian children are “fed hate and incitement against their Jewish neighbours”, as their leaders “name schools after terrorists” and endorse textbooks promoting violence.
Baroness Altmann referred to the lack of progress in peace talks over the years, with all proposals rejected by the Palestinian leadership. “The problem was not where [Israel’s] borders lie but that it has any borders”, she said.
Baroness Altmann added: “Trust in a partnership for peace needs to be rebuilt, but we also need a home for the Jewish people after millennia of prejudice, oppression and death. As we recall the liberation of concentration camp prisoners just 75 years ago—still within the lifetime of survivors who had nowhere to run to, no country they could call home—the Jewish state is absolutely vital. Every piece of this land has been fought for with huge sacrifices”.
Lord Davies of Gower reflected on previous Israeli offers of land in exchange for peace, particularly in the days after the 1967 Six-Day War when “Israel said it was prepared to return most of the territory in exchange for peace treaties with its Arab neighbours”.
The infamous “Three Noes” (“no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel”) resolved by the Arab League in 1967 “brought an end to this hope”, the Conservative Lord said.
In his view, this “demonstrates that the greatest obstacle to peace is the continued refusal of Israel’s neighbours to recognise its right to exist and flourish as a Jewish state in any part of the land”.
Lord Davies also expressed concerns over the increasing threat posed by Iran, including its funding of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group which has “targeted Israeli soldiers with sniper fire and explosive devices in recent weeks and fired dozens of rockets towards Israeli communities”.
He urged the UK Government to expedite the international review into “troubling” Palestinian textbooks exposed in the Daily Mail this week, and condemned the “practice of honouring terrorists and glorifying them as martyrs”. Lord Davies underlined: “We must confront this antisemitism as strongly as we do here at home”.
He also noted the problematic criteria used to evaluate recipients of aid from the UN Relief and Works’ Agency, which is “based on entitlement, not need”.
Lord Leigh of Hurley emphasised that “for any peace plan to have a chance, it will need a dramatic change in the leadership of the Palestinian people”.
He said: “The incitement to hatred that still exists – despicably fuelled by textbooks that we, the British taxpayer, helped to finance, particularly in Gaza, denying the thousands of years of Jewish heritage to the land – has to be addressed by our Government and others in the West who care about the region”.
Lord Leigh also highlighted the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab countries after the State of Israel was established in 1948: “Some 800,000 Jews were summarily expelled from Arab countries, where they had lived for generations and indeed millennia, just for being Jewish”.
Lord Suri drew attention to the economic aspects of the US proposals and said that “economic growth and prosperity for all sectors of society, in particular the youth, are essential for establishing a lasting peace”.
He was “delighted” to see “trade increase between Israel and the United Kingdom by nearly 300% over the last decade”, expressing hope that the UK’s economic ties with the Palestinians will similarly expand.
Responding to the debate, Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon urged the resumption of “substantive peace talks between the parties” and said that the latest proposals should not be “used as an excuse by those who seek to cause further division”.
“Hamas and Hezbollah’s actions, particularly those that impact on the security of the State of Israel, have to be condemned, and rightly so”, he said.
Read the full debate here.
