ISRAELI police aimed guns at two British MPs during a visit to the West Bank, it has emerged.
Independent Alliance MP Shockat Adam and LibDem Andrew George were watching settlers grazing livestock when armed settlers and soldiers approached them on April 15.
Speaking at a press conference in London, Adam (below) said: “We were witnessing settlers, who were already armed, grazing their sheep and their cows on land that did not belong to them.
“While we stopped to observe this, a police car came hurtling towards us and I think there’s some images of the police officers who came out pointing guns at us, hands on the trigger.”
Adam said that guns were lowered after their local guide explained who he and George were, adding: “But their hands were still on the trigger.”
The Leicester South MP said this was a “daily occurrence” in the West Bank and told how he and George were staying with a man whose house was surrounded by others which had been “taken over” by Israeli settlers.
He said that two settlers attempted to pressure their host into giving them his house in Hebron, allegedly telling him: “You might as well give us this house, because we’re going to take it anyway.”
Adam added: "We saw first-hand aggressive Israeli colonisers, it was absolutely shocking to experience.
"What was really alarming and what interested me, was many of these Israeli colonisers or settlers not only work with the protection of armed police, they seemed to be working in collaboration with armed police."
Adam also told how he witnessed Israelis intimidating people of different faiths at sacred sites in Jerusalem, including Palestinian Christians worshipping at Easter.
Elsewhere, George (above), the MP for St Ives, said that he had briefly been detained at Ben Gurion Airport while entering Israel, though was eventually allowed into the country.
It comes after two Labour MPs, Yuan Yang and Atisam Mohamed, were denied entry to Israel after criticising the country's government.
This was condemned by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who said it was "unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning" for MPs to be treated as they had.
George argued that Israeli settlers illegally occupying the West Bank were more accurately described as "intruders or evictors".
He said that he could sympathise with those who argued that a two-state solution, the official policy of the UK Government, was a "waste of political energy".
