Transcript: Opening debate on 'The Big Questions', 12 Feb 2017

NICKY CAMPBELL: On Tuesday, Mrs May held talks at Downing Street with her opposite number in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Increasing trade and investment with Israel was high on the agenda. The day before, the Knesset, Israel's parliament, passed a bill legalising settlements on privately owned Palestinian land on the West Bank, in direct contradiction of a UN Security Council Resolution. Mrs May was clear that Britain opposes settlement activity and believes the two-state solution is the best way to bring peace to the region. Should we trade with Israel now the settlements have been recognised? Well, I've been doing debates on this issue for 30 years now. And it's never that quiet. It's very, very impassioned on both sides. We shall attempt to proceed in a civilised direction. Now, Ryvka from War on Want, many would say, "Are you serious? Come on! We've had trade deals with Saudi Arabia, with China, with Russia, with the United Arab Emirates, some of the worst human rights abusers on the planet - none of them a democracy like Israel is. How can you possibly justify this?"

RYVKA BARNARD (War on Want): Well, I think there's a major issue with the UK. The UK should be putting human rights and international law at the centre of all of its trade negotiations with all countries. 

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): Should we stop trading with all those countries? 

RYVKA BARNARD: I think it's a question to be brought up. I think we can't talk about trade without talking about human rights and international law. That's why it's important for the UK to take action right now, move beyond words and suspend its trade relations with Israel because of its systematic violations of international law. 

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): If we stop trading with countries with human rights abuses, at a time when we need friends, we'd go out of business.

Ryvka Barnard

RYVKA BARNARD: I think what happens when you continue trading with human rights-abusing regimes like Israel, you're basically incentivising human rights abuse and you are giving a green light to say that violations of international law, doing things like building settlements, demolishing Palestinian homes, is OK. We might say on the side, we don't like it when you do that, as Theresa May did, but incentivising them with trade and especially things like the arms trade - the UK Government has approved over £100 million worth of arms exports to Israel in 2016 alone - those arms are used in violence against Palestinians. So it's a real double standard to say 'no settlements' on one hand but then to be no settlements but giving arms to the country that is building them. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: You refer to Israel. Paul, good morning Paul, chairman of the Zionist Federation, former tank commander with the IDF, there's a couple of things I need to ask you and then we'll throw it out. I want to hear from the audience, because, of course, hands going up already. Ryvka referred to, in unequivocal terms there, Israel as a human rights abuser. How would you respond to what she said there? 

PAUL CHARNEY (Zionist Federation): Well, that needs to be qualified. Israel, certainly by Freedom House, is recognised as the only free country in the Middle East. It has a very strong democracy. It has a Supreme Court. It is not subservient to the executive. It will look at this legislation and it will decide whether it's legal or not. There is a huge social housing crisis amongst the Palestinians and among the Israelis, and these towns that are expanding need to expand. So, it is a controversial issue and you can disagree, but the same time, if the UK disagreed with every country, with every political decision, it certainly wouldn't be dealing with China, it wouldn't be dealing with India over Kashmir,wouldn't be dealing with Turkey over Northern Cyprus, and the opposite would be true. It's not like Spain would cease dealing with the UK over Gibraltar, or Argentina would cease dealing with the UK over the Falkland Islands. What we need is to understand to put this into perspective, that the settlements are an issue but they're one issue, since 1967, that needs to be dealt with in the much larger framework of a peace agreement which the Palestinians require and when they want to build a home in a state for themselves more than they want to destroy and boycott Israel. When that priority changes then peace can be achieved. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: Let's go to the audience first. Right behind Paul. Good morning. Your microphone is coming! This gentleman here. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: We're in an age where Trump wants to build walls and impose travel bans and impose restrictions on people based on their religion or identity and, surely, what we want to be doing is reaching out to countries, reaching out to different communities...

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): Israel for example? 
AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: To Israel...and to engage and to challenge, constructively, and to say this is wrong but also to say, we recognise you are a democracy, we want to work with you. We want to build those trade links, build those partnerships, improve relationships for all the peoples in the world, rather than being isolationist. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: You keep saying it's a democracy. It's not a democracy. It's a democracy similar to what South Africa was in the apartheid time. You know, so many people are disenfranchised, they don't have any say in the running of Israel and they keep saying it is a democracy...

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): It has women's rights, it has trades union rights, it has gay rights, union. That is one angle on it. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: It's the biggest concentration camp in the world. It's almost a prison. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: OK, let's get a...Paul, do you want to respond to that? I need to be very careful bringing the points back and forth, so it is fair. 

PAUL CHARNEY: You have to be careful with the terminology that you use, and that's hugely harmful for what is recognised internationally as a democracy. As we said, we have all the minorities as heads of Supreme Court, as doctors, as heads of hospitals, heads of universities. Minorities from across the board, Arabs, Druze, Christians. And this is recognised across the Middle East as a beacon for what could be seen as a free country that all the rest of the countries around can look and see this is what we want to have. This is the beacon. This is your ultimate. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: Gentlemen there, first of all, there is a point you made, the first speaker, so what's you name?

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Leon.

NICKY CAMPBELL: The point Leon made I want to put to you, Professor Hawwash, which is and interesting and many would think a very significant one. First of, good morning. How are you? 

Professor Kamel Hawwash

KAMEL HAWWASH (Palestine Solidarity Campaign): Good morning. Very well, thank you. I mean, I'm just shocked that you have reduced the Palestinian question and the crisis in the middle East to a housing problem. If think you said that it's a housing problem that exists for Israelis and Palestinians and you are expanding these towns because there is a housing crisis that needs to be addressed. It's the continued colonisation of Palestine. You're demolishing houses. You are chasing and removing, and let's call it out for what it is. It's ethnic cleansing going on in these areas, that have gone on for decades. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: OK, I'm going to put that point to Tom. OK, go on Leon, come back on it. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: I think it's really important to have a debate but we need to be so careful with our language because we want to have a civilised debate here. Using words like 'concentration camps' and 'ethnic cleansing' is really offensive, not just to Jews but to all people who have actually suffered that extreme genocide and persecution. So please don't use language like 'concentration camps' because it is not concentration camp. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Well, it's a fact, isn't it? It is a fact. All these people have been disenfranchised. I mean, the building settlements, Palestinian houses are being demolished. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: Professor Hawwash, let me put a point to you that Leon did make, that trade means links, means diplomacy, means influence. It means you can make progress. OK, Zimbabwe. We have sanctions on Zimbabwe. We have absolutely zero influence there. We cannot help the people who are suffering egregiously at the hands of Mugabe and his thugs. The only way we get to Zimbabwe is through the back channels of South Africa, and that's difficult enough. Would you want to create a situation where we have no influence, no trading links with Israel?

KAMEL HAWWASH: You said you have been covering this topic for 30 years and during this period the number of settlers in the West Bank has increased by something like 100,000, to now 600-700,000 people. It will reach 1 million unless we do something to stop it, because if people really are interested in peace, you need to look at the situation of the Palestinians, who didn't choose to be occupied, to have their land taken, to have another state created in our homeland - and I speak as a Palestinian. We didn't choose any of that. So what this is about is the rights of the Palestinian people. Paul talked about housing, building houses. It;s just ludicrous. These houses are built for only one type of person. A Jewish Israeli. Not for Palestinians. If Israel was serious about solving the housing crisis, why doesn't it open up the settlements out to Palestinians? Even better, not build on someone else's land. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: Paul?

PAUL CHARNEY: It's never been Palestinian land. You've never had a state, and we want to help you create a safe, but prior to '67 it was owned by the Jordanians and the Jordanians would not allow you to own your own land. And prior to that the British and prior to that it was the Ottomans. This land is called 'disputed' for that very fact. We want to help you. 

KAMEL HAWWASH (interrupting): Do we Palestinians exist as a people?

PAUL CHARNEY: We want to help you. 

KAMEL HAWWASH: Do we Palestinians exist as a people, do you think? Do you recognise us as a people?

PAUL CHARNEY: Absolutely. And you should have a state and you should live along side us and you should....

KAMEL HAWWASH (interrupting): Right, so why don't you put pressure on the Israeli government.

PAUL CHARNEY: ...put down your arms and stop glorifying terrorists.

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): Wait, wait! Let me intervene right there. So, Tom, is this not the situation now, with the settlements having been legitimised in the Knesset? Someone mentioned a wall just now, does that not put a massive wall up to the possibility of a two state solution? Massively counter-productive. 

Tom Wilson

TOM WILSON (Henry Jackson Society): This is a proposed law. We'll see if it gets through the Supreme Court, because Israel does have quite strong checks and balances on its democracy. I think it's very concerning that we think the presence of Jewish people in the West Bank in some way negates their being able to be a Palestinian state. Why is it assumed this Palestinian state has to be Jew-free? Why couldn't Palestinian state have a Jewish minority, just as Israel has an Arab and Muslim minority? I don't think we can criminalise an entire community just because they've ended up on the wrong side of the Armistice line. And the fact is, as we've said, there are about half a million people there, they are not going anywhere. It's better that we learn for the two sides to be able to accept a minority within one another's countries. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: Ryvka, do you want to come back on that? 

RYVKA BARNARD: Yes, I think it's important for us to recognise that the settlements, like people have referred to, it's been a policy of the state of Israel for decades now. The reason why settlements exist in the West Bank is not because they ended up on the wrong side of the Armistice line. It's a policy of expansion and colonisation, as somebody has mentioned. And it's against international law - and that's undisputed. And it's against UK policy. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: Would you boycott...as a consumer, would you boycott products from Israel? 

RYVKA BARNARD: Absolutely. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: How do you feel when you use Google, because they have a major research and development centre in Israel? How do you feel about that? 

RYVKA BARNARD: It think it's less about an individual consumer, though....

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): You just said you definitely would do that. If you had a list of choices would you radically transform your habits? 

RYVKA BARNARD: I think the important thing is for the UK Government to take action in line with its own policy. The UK foreign policy recognises settlements as illegal under international law. It's important for the UK to act on that policy. We talked a llittle bit about engagement and you raised the question of whether the UK would have more influence through engagement. If viewers remember Margaret Thatcher's days in relation to South Africa, the policy was constructive engagement. Now, in retrospect, it's recognise that that actually prolonged apartheid and that actually allowed apartheid to deepen. Constructive engagement as a policy was rubbished after apartheid fell finally, because of economic pressure like sanctions. So I think it's important for us to recognise that as an important tool that the UK Government has. It is time again to move beyond words and condemnation and into action. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: Paul? And then we'll come to more from the audience in a second. Paul, just come back on that.

PAUL CHARNEY: Yes, I just like to bring something constructive into it, and the blame game is not going to get us to a peace deal. I'd like to see the Palestinian Authority take more control over its own people and over the peace process and for it to be wanting the Palestinian state more than it wants to destroy and denigrate an Israeli state. I think there is goodwill around the world and in Israel to help you do that. But you must remember that with all the wars that came in, that Israel had to defend itself. It has given back the Sinai. It has given back Gaza. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: What about the gentleman's point that a proportion of our audience...a proportion of our audience...I'm just going to put that to him...a proportion of our audience will be wondering, and it's the point represented by that gentleman: Taking land from people, land that is not yours. How do you respond to that? 

PAUL CHARNEY: Firstly, this is disputed territory with Palestinians and Jews living on it. [Heckles]. Please allow me to speak. Please allow me to speak. 

KAMEL HAWWASH: No, it isn't disputed territory. It is occupied. It's illegally occupied. 

Paul Charney

PAUL CHARNEY: When the Israelis left Gaza, every inch of Gaza, the Palestinian land, gave it back and said 'Create a state! We are leaving you greenhouses. We are leaving you businesses.' What was created was a mini terrorist state with only the development of bombs and warfare. The problem is that if Israel does the same thing immediately and retracts from the West Bank, we're going to have the same extremist ideology coming out of there. We cannot trust and rely without a strong security presence. We cannot trust and rely on these states like Hamas to automatically become democratic and allow gays and Christians to flourish. It will not happen.

NICKY CAMPBELL: Kamel, Professor Hawwash, I will be with you. You will have the next voice on the front row, and Ibrahim will be in as well. And Tom will be back. First off though, more audience comments. Leon, you've had a good say. Let me go to the gentleman at the back. Good morning.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: It is important to realise, I believe, after the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union, and other factors coming into the 21st-century, that Britain is no longer the global player in the world that it was in the post-colonial period after 1945 at the end of the Second World War. 

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): So what should we do? 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: The diminishing power, I believe, you know, we haven't got a responsibility to police the world in the same way and we haven't got the capability. 

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): So what do we do about Israel? 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: We shouldn't boycott them in any sense at all because in respect of trading with places like Dubai,  trading with places like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, even trading with Pakistan...

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): Where there is a blasphemy law.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Israel is democratic and free, as the gentleman said. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: A point made earlier on and expressed well by yourself too. Go on.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Good morning, Nicky. This question is about trade. My concern is that the Brexit vote will lead to our leaders, Prime Minister May and others, only giving criticisms of countries that are abusing human rights behind their hands, whispering it instead of saying it forcefully, 

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): Because we need friends?

AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Because we need friends. So I worry that that ethical foreign policy that Robin Cook wished for is not going to happen because we are in no position to criticise others.

NICKY CAMPBELL: Realpolitik. Is there such a thing as an ethical foreign policy? 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: I think there should be. 

NICKY CAMPBELL: Professor Hawwash, you pointed at Paul. You wanted to come back.

KAMEL HAWWASH: Yes, in the age of Trump, it seems that trade trumps human rights and that is something we should all oppose and oppose very strongly. Paul talked about the Palestinians should take more control of their people and so on. Let I'll just give you an example. Under the Oslo accord, an area called Area C, the most fertile part of Palestine, is apparently under Israeli security and administrative control, it was was to be passed over. It isn't being passed over. In fact Naftali Bennett - one of a number of Israeli ministers - say it should be annexed. They actually have no interest in a Palestinian state emerging. Naftali Bennett only yesterday advising Prime Minister Netanyahu, who's going to Washington next week, said "Two words you should not use. You should not utter two words, 'Palestinian' and 'state'". So if there is no Palestinian state, I would very much like to hear from Paul and others what the solution is where there are almost an equal number of Palestinians and Jewish people in that land.

NICKY CAMPBELL: Tom, what's the solution and how strategically important do you believe Israel is to this country?

TOM WILSON: It is very strategically important in terms of...you know, we've got a growing high-tech economy in Israel, and things like counter-terror. But that is by the by and I think the issue here is the moral issue and the issue of human rights. We are being very selective in how we are talking about human rights. I mean, War on Want is being particularly selective by their targeting of Israel for boycotts. They say they care about international law. I don't hear them calling for boycotts of other countries with similar issues. And on the issue of Palestinian human rights, it seems that many people in this audience are more angry about the building of Jewish houses in the West Bank than they are about the abuse of Palestinian rights by Palestinians. If your starting point is Palestinian human rights why don't you call out the Palestinian Authority for its extra-judicial killing of Palestinians, for torture of Palestinians, for harassment of journalists and for detention without trial? And yet we hear silence on all of this. The focus is exclusively on finding reasons to boycott and demonise the world's only Jewish state. 

KAMEL HAWWASH: We are talking about Palestinian rights and freedom. What the other side is talking about is simply sustaining the status quo. The status quo has led us to a situation where there is a lot of unhappiness and anger and abuse of the Palestinians by the Israeli state. We need to be free for there to be peace in Palestine. 

Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra

NICKY CAMPBELL: Ibrahim Mogra, from the Muslim Council of Britain, do you recognise Israel's right to exist? 

SHAYKH IBRAHIM MOGRA (MCB): Within internationally recognised borders, yes. I think we have brought Israel into our embrace far more than I would have liked to see. They are participants in the football Euro competitions and they are participants in the Eurovision Song Contest, and we don't even share a border with them. So in response to your point about isolating Israel, we have actually remained in at least cultural and political contact with them. The important thing here is that international law has got to be applied equally across the board. It is not about Israel, whether it's Saudi Arabia, Pakistan was mentioned, the Gulf states were mentioned, China, whichever state it is. As human beings, if we subscribe to international law, if we fail to apply the UN resolutions equally across the board, what are we showing to the world? That democracy is selective. That powerful nations will pick on the weaker nations. That self-interest and national interest will trump all the other global interests. So the question here is: Are we applying the same yardstick to measure all the different behaviours of government? We have gone into Iraq and Libya because their leaders were corrupt and dictatorial, as they were, but they flaunted UN security resolutions.  How many resolutions has Israel overlooked over time? As long as...

NICKY CAMPBELL (interrupting): We've got to leave it there because we have other things to debate, but your point came across loud and clear. Not that everybody watching is going to agree with it. It's a perilous line, this debate, always, but I think that was pretty calm. Do you reckon?  Do you reckon?Everyone? Yes? OK, let's do the next one!