Clare Short: Catherine Bertini's report, and the subsequent UN Humanitarian Plan of Action, stimulated a very useful debate in the international community on how best to respond to the growing humanitarian Crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Economic development in Iraq will benefit its people and the wider region, but we must also remember that there is a severe humanitarian Crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and that progress in the Middle East requires full implementation of the roadmap to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel by 2005.

Economic development in Iraq will benefit its people and the wider region, but we must also remember that there is a severe humanitarian Crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and that progress in the middle east requires full implementation of the road map and the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel by 2005.