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23 August PASSIA Briefing, Christmas Hotel, Jerusalem

Q34 Richard Younger-Ross: There is a belief amongst some of the Jewish Israelis we met that a peace deal with Syria is possible. There is also a belief that America is obstructing that, although not one I would necessarily hold to as there are conspiracies everywhere. What do you believe can be done and what hopes do you see in there being a proper and long-lasting peace being secured between Israel and Syria and what can we do to assist that?

Dr Howells: Syria is a very major player in all of this, there is no question about it, and Syria is a major player in Iraq. Those arbitrary frontiers that were drawn up on a weekend in Cairo by Winston Churchill in 1921 disrupted a lot of natural movement across that border and unfortunately some of that movement has continued since the invasion of Iraq. We hope very much that Syria will take a more positive role than it has up until now. It has, I think, played a very negative role in sabotaging the peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians. When I met President Abu Mazen of the Palestinian Authority, he said to me that he thought that there were really three factions now even inside Hamas, that there was the Damascus faction, which was the hardest line of all, there were the kind of Provisional IRA equivalents in Gaza and there were those who found themselves suddenly in government in Hamas who realised that if they were going to make any progress, they had to move themselves politically and they had to begin to think about some of the positions they had taken up previously, and I think he is probably right. Now, if Damascus refuses to, if you like, assist with that process of trying to encourage, however gently as possible and saving as much face as they need to save, some kind of political reassessment within Hamas, then I fear for the worst. Their position vis-à-vis Hezbollah, I think, is a very confused one for Syria. Syria, I think much more than Iran, feels much more vulnerable to international pressure and it has not got the enormous potential and wealth in oil and gas that Iran has. It needs to be a trader, it needs to be just like Lebanon and just like Israel actually and I think it understands, or at least there are elements within Syria who understand, that if it does not become that creature, that kind of nation, it is going to become a very difficult place for Syrians to live in. It is going to be a very poor place and its economy will not flourish and it needs it to flourish, although there is a bit of hope there, I think, but we have got to work very hard on our diplomatic relations with Syria, there is no question about it.

Q44 Richard Younger-Ross: One of the problems with the two-State solution is the continued expansion of the settlements. I was in, as I said, Bethlehem and apart from meeting an elderly Palestinian lady who said she was glad to meet a British politician because it was all our fault from the 1920s - they have long memories - very clearly from Bethlehem you could see the settlements being constructed, the cranes were in action, building work was going on and it is going to be very hard to find Palestinians who say that there can be a two-State solution when Israel is expanding into what they see as their State.

Dr Howells: I agree with you entirely. It is a situation that cannot be justified and it generates huge resentment throughout the Middle East and throughout the world, there is no question about it. We have urged the Israelis and I will be urging the Israeli Ambassador this afternoon, a very civilised and humane individual, to take that message back to his Government again that this is not helping the Peace Process in any shape or form and that they should not just desist from expanding existing settlements, but they should start dismantling illegal settlements.

Q45 Richard Younger-Ross: Can you also take the message back that I met the Deputy Mayor of Bethlehem and he had been shot and his daughter had been killed by Israelis in an accidental shooting and he wanted to work for peace. They are undermining in their actions at the moment and they are likely to end up with Hezbollah getting a foothold in the Palestinian West Bank which it does not really have at the moment, and that is very dangerous for the long-term safety and stability of Israel.

Dr Howells: I am sure he will be watching you at this very moment, but I will repeat your words.

Q30 Richard Younger-Ross: I had the opportunity to visit Israel and Haifa two and a half weeks ago and I have seen the bomb damage in Haifa. I also know that between one site and another you actually have a five-minute drive down Acacia Lane and very pleasant avenues, not to deny the fear that a city under attack would be under. Having seen that and having seen the sort of damage there is, I can understand the terror, but I still do not understand why we could not say at the time that there was a disproportionate response. I particularly do not understand why we cannot say that it is disproportionate for the Israelis to deny the UN aid convoys to take much-needed relief into southern Lebanon. Can you comment on that and why the Government did not say more to ensure that UN aid was able to get through?

Dr Howells: We said a great deal about the need for aid to get in and for reconstruction to begin as quickly as possible and we were very worried about the fact that our co-ordination with the Israelis in order to get our own people out, for example, had to be very, very precise. The helicopter that transported me and colleagues and some troops out of Beirut, we landed on the HMS Illustrious, our aircraft carrier, on the way back to Cyprus and there the Commander of the Fleet explained to me how very precise they had to be with navigation because otherwise they were going to get shot down, they were going to get attacked by Israeli aircraft. I think the situation was that acute that it was an extraordinarily delicate balance between the desire to get humanitarian aid in and, as the Israelis saw it, to continue to hit Hezbollah. Now, we urged the Israelis at every opportunity that we could to allow humanitarian aid to get in there. The Israelis came back to us time and again and said, "As long as that humanitarian aid is humanitarian aid and those trucks do not contain spares for Hezbollah's rocketry". There were some very unfortunate incidents, we understand, where convoys containing aid that probably came from elsewhere in the Middle East, humanitarian aid, was stopped at the Syrian border because the Syrians themselves had inserted other vehicles into those convoys which were carrying armaments. Now, I do not know if that is true, but I am trying to give you a sense of what the atmosphere was like at the time. I would hope that this UN investigatory mission that is there at the moment to look at these questions of whether or not Israel was denying humanitarian aid when it could have allowed it to happen, I will await the findings of that investigation, but I am not in a position to tell you whether or not that is true or false. I can only give you my impressions and a kind of picture of what life was like at the time, but it was a very, very difficult situation. It was so difficult in fact, and I am sure, Mr Younger-Ross, you remember, that Hezbollah had, amongst other things, some land-based missiles which are a bit like Exocet missiles. They are made by the Chinese, we understand, or maybe by the Iranians under licence from the Chinese. These were fired from the shore and we understand that they destroyed two Israeli naval vessels. The commanders of our naval task force which was to evacuate people from Beirut, from Lebanon, were very worried about the fact that they might get hit by these missiles and this was not a frivolous consideration, but a very, very serious one.