Durkan makes impassioned Commons speech in favour of Palestinian statehood SDLP Foyle MP Mark Durkan made an impassioned speech in the House of Commons last night in favour of recognising Palestinian statehood – in which he drew parallels with the Northern Ireland peace process. Speaking during the debate, which saw Parliament take the historic step of voting 274 to 12 in favour of recognising the state of Palestine, Mr Durkan said: “The question for this House is: where do we stand on the basic, core question that constantly runs through this problem? “Every time there is violence and every time the attempts at a peace process fail, fall into a lull and are followed by more violence – whether it is from Hamas or the excessive efforts of the Israeli defence forces, as we have seen this summer – people ask what the western world is doing about it. Where does the international community stand when human rights are sacrificed again and again, and what is its will when international law is violated again and again? Of course, we hear from the Dispatch Box and elsewhere that the Israeli government are told not to be disproportionate and warned against occupations, and yet the situation continues. “People are increasingly fed up with this screensaver politics, where shapes are thrown, images projected and impressions generated, but nothing real goes on in relation to the substantive issue. People in our constituencies find it frustrating, but the people for whom it must be most frustrating are those moderate people in the middle east, including those in Israel who know that their security will never come from drenching people in Gaza with bombs, and those in Palestine who know that their peace, rights and liberation will not come through lobbing rockets into Israel. They want a peace process and they know that at the heart of that peace process there has to be a two-state solution, and that two-state solution has a better chance of happening if there is at least a semblance of a two-state process. When there is no two-state process, we are wasting our time talking about a two-state solution. “A couple of attempts have been made to cloud some of the issues, including by the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). He tried to suggest that the experience of the Northern Ireland peace process somehow means that we should not recognise the state of Palestine now, but leave everybody to sort everything out and then recognise it. The truth is that he and his party opposed the peace process throughout and did so shrilly. They said that the sky would fall in. They opposed American involvement. They opposed what the British and Irish governments did to create the framework for a solution, and they opposed building a solution based on three sets of relationships—institutions in Northern Ireland, institutions in Ireland and institutions between Ireland and Britain. “The point is that people outside a conflict sometimes have to help to create some of the givens in a process. In the give and take that we expect in a negotiated process, particularly in a historic conflict, it is not in the parties’ gift to do all the giving; that is where responsible international input can create some givens and new realities. “The layers of understanding, initiative and input from the international community over several years helped to condition the context of the peace process (in Northern Ireland) and to give people a sense of reality about our problem and the absolute and unavoidable requirements of a solution. That was done in ways that made people comfortable with those requirements, because they did not have the burden of making concessions or compromises themselves, but could take them as things that were already givens in the process. “That is why the important step from the international community in doing more to recognise the state of Palestine is the creation of a sense that the process is more equal. Will recognition create a solution? No. Will detailed negotiations have to happen? Absolutely. People will have the huge task of trying to work out a solution, to work with the solution and to work with each other within the solution, but one thing the international community can do is to say, “We are not going to endorse anybody’s excesses by retailing their excuses.” That is why we should not endorse the violence of Israel by subscribing to its veto on the very process in the very basic question before the House tonight.”
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 09:19:43 +0000
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