Caabu is delighted to welcome Rt. Hon. David Jones MP to its board. David was the former Secretary of State for Wales and has a passionate interest in the Middle East. David joined Caabu's delegation to Jordan in November 2014 and visited Palestine for the first time in September 2015 on a joint Caabu/Medical Aid for Palestinians delegation. You can read more about David here.
Following his visit to Palestine and Israel with Caabu, David had a question to David Cameron at Prime Minister's Questions on 21 October 2015:
"Given the increasing violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, will my right hon. Friend wish the United Nations Secretary-General well on his visit to Jerusalem today? Does he agree with him when he says that “walls, checkpoints, harsh responses by the security forces and house demolitions” cannot achieve the peace that Israel desires?"
The Prime Minister replied:
"I would agree that of course those things do not lead to peace, and what is required is a peace process to deliver a two-state solution. We will all have seen appalling murders on our television screens—knife stabbings of entirely innocent people in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel—and that is completely unacceptable. We need to make sure that this peace process gets going on a genuine basis of a two-state solution."
David also had a Written Question to the Foreign Secretary about the deaths of 18 month old Ali Dawabshe in Duma (whose home the delegation visited), and his parents Saad and Riham:
"To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether he has made representations to the Israeli authorities in the aftermath of the deaths of Saad, Riham and Ali Dawabsheh."
The Minister responsible for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood, replied:
"I released a statement condemning this horrific attack on the same day that it happened, 31 July. Officials from the British Embassy in Tel Aviv have raised the deaths of the Dawabsheh family with the Israeli authorities, most recently with the Israeli Defence Minister on 10 September. We have called on the Israeli authorities to ensure that those responsible for this crime are brought swiftly to justice and we continue to follow the case closely."
