Hansard

I congratulate Sandra White on securing this important debate and I declare an interest as a member of the cross-party group on Palestine and as a member of the Scottish Palestine solidarity campaign. Scotland has strong links with Palestine, and the Scottish labour movement has a long history of supporting the Palestinian struggle for justice.

The UK, as the originator of the Balfour declaration, has a unique historical and moral responsibility to the people of both Palestine and Israel, yet, 100 years on from our 1920 commitment to guide Palestinians to statehood, the Palestinian people are still struggling for self-determination and for recognition.

Last October, the UK Parliament voted overwhelmingly to recognise Palestine, but just two days later—as Sandra White mentioned—David Cameron said that he would recognise Palestine only

“when the time is right”.

The time is not only right, it is long overdue. The UK has neglected its responsibilities and obligations to the Palestinian people for too long.

Recognition of Palestine is not, and can never be, a bargaining chip or a negotiating tool. It is a fundamental and unconditional human right for the Palestinian people. The fact that the UK is one of a handful of nations that refused to support recognition at the United Nations is simply shameful. I hope that one of the first actions of the new UK Government will be to join the 135 nations right across the world that now recognise Palestine, because the need for international pressure has never been greater.

The two-state solution seems to be slipping away under Prime Minister Netanyahu—a man who just one day before Israel’s general election ruled out a Palestinian state while he was Prime Minister; who is on record as saying that Israel has no respect for international law; who believes the deaths of 2,000 civilians during last year’s atrocities in Gaza was “proportionate”; and whose actions appear to be geared towards destroying what little hope the Palestinian people have left.

In recent years, we have seen the illegal settlements expand rapidly, we have seen Palestinians subjected to ever-increasing and punitive restrictions on movement, we have seen the continued building of the illegal apartheid wall, which is dividing and isolating Palestinian land and families, and all the time we are witnessing a large-scale and growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Recognition of Palestine will not secure peace, it will not end the blockade and it will not stop the day-to-day reality of occupation in Palestine, or the collective punishment of people in Gaza. However, it will help to restore hope at a time when diplomacy appears to have failed, and it will send a message to the Israeli Government that Scotland and the UK believe that Palestine has the same right to recognition and security that Israel does and that the existence of a Palestinian state is an absolute requirement for peace. That change needs to happen now and is in the best interests of both the Palestinian and the Israeli people.

Last summer, the world united in its condemnation of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. Day after day, our television screens were filled with images of schools, hospitals and housing estates reduced to rubble by the Israeli army. More than 500 children lost their lives. The UN secretary general said that Israel’s actions caused an “unprecedented” level of destruction, creating a man-made humanitarian crisis from which it will take Gaza decades to recover. Nine months on, only a quarter of the money that was pledged to rebuild Gaza has been released and reconstruction and recovery have barely begun. A staggering 100,000 people are still homeless and no action has been taken to end the illegal blockade that is denying the people of Gaza access to basic essentials of life, including clean water and healthcare.

Recognition of Palestine is only the start of the journey to justice. I hope that we can send out a strong message from the Scottish Parliament that we recognise the right of the Palestinian people to freedom and self-determination and that we will use our influence, politically and economically, to support the Palestinians’ struggle for justice. The message should be that we will not sit by and watch while the Israeli Government breaches international law by operating what is, in effect, an apartheid regime that treats Palestinian people—including Palestinian children—as second-class citizens, that denies them basic human rights and that believes that the life of an Israeli child is more precious than the life of a Palestinian child, because we believe that every child’s life is precious and that every child in this world is equal. It is time to secure justice and freedom for the Palestinian people; it is time to recognise Palestine.