Between a Wall and a Hard Place

We stopped on a ridge overlooking a Palestinian valley. On the hill on the left a Jewish settlement with nest white houses and green gardens. On the right a fairly run-down Palestinian village. The valley was dry and stony sloping down to a water spring.

Suddenly we saw a trail of smoke arching up into the sky and falling  among some houses on the outskirts of the Palestinian village. Tear gas. Fired by Israeli soldiers to hold back the weekly protest by young people from the village. They were objecting to the fact that they have been denied access to their traditional water source. So they can’t water their crops and can’t earn a living.

We were visiting friends in Jerusalem last weekend and toured part of the West Bank. I wanted to see for myself the situation which dominates many conversations in Amman and occupies an awful lot of international diplomatic effort. And I wanted to think about whether and how a two-state solution could work.

On Friday we visited the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques, above the Western Wall – all three stunningly beautiful and sacred places. We then toured East Jerusalem with an expert to look at settlements as well as places where Palestinian houses had been taken over by settlers. This was only a few days after the announcement of another 1,100 housing units in the settlement of Gilo, East Jerusalem, a unilateral move condemned by William Hague as both illegal and as an obstacle to international efforts to achieve peace.

Any first hand visit brings home to you immediately the enormous sensitivity of the city, sacred to three major religions. People from all over the world come to celebrate their links to the city and hold religious ceremonies in their special churches, mosques and synagogues. The close proximity of these holy sites  raises all sorts of sensitivities. It only works if the followers of all three religions are prepared to share the city and if they all respect each other’s rights. Anything that tries to change the religious or ethnic nature of a neighbourhood by compulsion is liable to spark problems.

We then went on to drive round parts of the West Bank. Here settler activity is evident not only in the 150 established illegal settlements but in 100 illegal outposts too. The United Nations has said that expropriating land from Palestinians and the construction of settlements is against international law. The UN has called upon Israel to stop building settlements and to stop the practice of facilitating the settling of Israeli citizens in Palestinian neighbourhoods. Today, there are just under 200,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, and another 300,000 in the West Bank.

Against the backdrop of the expansion of settlements, I asked myself whether a two-state solution was feasible. The optimists still think it is – just. But time is running out. There are still Palestinians who, despite the wall that separates their villages from Israeli settlements (but often also from their land) and the daily restrictions on their freedom of movement, still hope that a deal can be done.  For them it is a question of dignity: to bring an end to the daily humiliations and frustrations they face, and to build an economy like any other, with free movement of people and goods.

It seems to me that there is no sensible alternative to a two-state solution. A one-state solution is in neither community’s interests. And continuing to deny the Palestinians the freedom and justice demanded elsewhere in the Middle East would surely be contrary to the universal values which the United Nations embodies.

And crucially, a two-state solution is the best outcome for Israel. The security and safety of their citizens and children is understandably of paramount importance and of huge sensitivity. The best way to guarantee that security is by negotiating a deal with the moderate PLO leadership currently running Palestinian policy, ending this conflict for good. As William Hague said in the Sunday Telegraph last week-end the UK goal remains the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state living in peace and security side by side with Israel. So our efforts will continue to press for an urgent return to meaningful negotiations leading to peace, security and dignity for all people in the region.