Meeting of the Parliament 03 September 2019
I congratulate Claudia Beamish, my colleague on the cross-party group on Palestine, on securing the debate and on making such a wonderful, heartfelt speech. I also welcome the people in the public gallery and thank them for their support and the hard work that they have carried out on the Balfour Project, a meeting of which was held here, in Edinburgh. I believe that a book will be produced that will contain submissions to the project, including those from Claudia and me.
Claudia Beamish referred to the history of Palestine. Like many others, I have always been a great believer that we cannot look to our future if we do not know about our past. Claudia gave us a detailed description of the middle east and what has happened to the Palestinian people, so I will not dwell on that.
Having said that, it is important that we recognise a Palestinian state—the subject of the debate—because it was, after all, the British who were responsible for partition. I am proud that many of us in Scotland and throughout the UK support the recognition of a Palestinian state. Claudia Beamish mentioned the British mandate. We know that the Balfour declaration promised to establish in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people, essentially vowing to give away a country that was not theirs—or ours—to give away. We know what has happened since, and the situation has got worse.
As Claudia Beamish said, in 1947, the British Government announced that it would hand Palestine over to the United Nations. On 29 November 1947, the UN adopted resolution 181, recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with special international status for the city of Jerusalem. We must remember that that was a UN statement, because we now have Trump and what I would describe as a toothless UN. Given the state of the West Bank, Gaza and the city of Jerusalem now, it is time to act. The 1947 proposals were unacceptable because they went against the principle of the right to self-determination and imposed unworkable conditions on the Palestinian people. Today, those conditions are still unworkable.
We need to know our past before we can go forward. Let us be clear: regardless of history, there is a way forward. The only way to achieve a lasting peace is to recognise a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one. That was not possible in 1947, but, for me and many others, it is the only viable option open to us now. It is the only viable option for the Palestinian people, particularly those who are imprisoned in Gaza—the largest open-air prison in the world. That is not justice and it is not right.
We, in the Parliament and in Scotland, cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand. It is time for us and the rest of the UK to join other UN member states in recognising a state of Palestine. It is time that the UK Government recognised the state of Palestine. If we, in this Parliament, recognise the state of Palestine, it will send a huge message not just to the UN but throughout the world.
From the time that Britain administered Palestine until it abandoned it, in 1948, our involvement in Palestine has been quite shameful. As I said, I think that the UN is a toothless tiger, but we support any UN efforts to bring about a two-state solution. We have talked about it enough: it is time for action. I fully support the motion and my colleagues who have supported it, and I support the six measures that are mentioned in the motion.
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