Israel (War against Terror)
During a debate about Israel and the War against Terror, Brooks Newmark condemns the Hamas Foreign Minister's statement that Hamas will should kidnap Israeli soldiers 'to exchange for (Palestinian) prisoners, should the opportunity arise'.
Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con): I have a brief question for the right hon. Gentleman. He has correctly pointed out that Hamas was elected democratically, but is it appropriate for the Foreign Minister of a democratically elected Government to say, as was said three months ago, that Hamas will not hesitate to kidnap Israeli soldiers
'to exchange for (Palestinian) prisoners, should the opportunity arise'?
That was said by the Hamas Foreign Minister, Mahmud al-Zahar, on 7 March 2006.
Sir Gerald Kaufman: Of course that is wrong, but equally wrong is the President of the United States kidnapping people and holding them in an illegal prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, which has just been condemned by the United States Supreme Court. As I have said before, there are no clean hands in this situation, but simply to target the evils of Hamas, which exist and must be condemned, is not enough if we are to see the whole spectrum of what is taking place in the middle east, and between the Israelis and the Palestinians today.
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OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEBATE
Mr. Newmark: Is not the core of the problem the fact that today, on the road map that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton was talking about, Israel does not exist for Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran? Therefore, Israel is in a position only to create a solution by itself. There is no one to negotiate with.
Mr. Wright: I agree. In the debate that I secured in Westminster Hall a couple of weeks ago on the prospects for peace in the middle east after the Israeli elections, I was struck by the comments of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who said that we all know the solution-it is Israel and a Palestinian state working together, side by side, with mutual economic and social co-operation. People recognise that and it is important that everyone should recognise it as the end point of the process.
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Mr. Newmark: The hon. Gentleman still has not answered the question that I posed earlier: how can Israel do anything but be unilateral when the other side does not actually recognise the state of Israel?
Richard Younger-Ross: Memories are very short. Fatah never used to recognise the state of Israel, but, eventually, it was brought to the negotiating table and accepted a two-state solution. Recent discussions with Hamas indicate that it, too, was moving towards accepting a two-state solution and accepting that the Palestinian territories could exist on one side of the 1967 border. De facto, Hamas is recognising the Israeli state, although it has not explicitly said so. There is still a long way to go-I am not saying that the problem is not significant-but the way to resolve it is to bring third parties in to talk to Hamas and to bring it to the negotiating table.
