It’s not every day you have an 18 year old army reservist poking a machine gun at you and barking orders — but it happened to me. My colleagues MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang being denied entry to Israel then booted back to Blighty brought back my brush at the same Ben Gurion airport, long before this present Gaza war.
As someone who has experienced similar I know it’s not a pleasant experience to be subjected to extra questioning then hauled aside. But at least it happened to me on the way out, not in. Given we are in the midst of a bloody war unfolding in real time there are wider implications too. The incident which happened to two young women has rightly outraged David Lammy.
Some asked what Mohamed and Yang were doing there anyway. The two MPs were part of a delegation to Palestine, where the West Bank population have no airport of their own — so that is the tried and tested route.
I remember the fact we were collected in a car with Israeli numberplates made easier our passage to Ramallah in area A of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (as designated by the Oslo accords) where we were staying. But it was still no tea party. We were subject to checkpoints. “They don’t have freedom of movement” as another MP colleague on the cross-party delegation I served on observed.
We all live and breathe our constituency life but at the same time it's good to get out. And with big topics important lawmakers can see the situation on the ground to know what it is they're talking about. That applies in my case too, whether I’m visiting a housing estate on the A40 where a pipe hairline crack led to 400 residents being without water for 5 days, or HS2’s Old Oak Common site.
And while all politics, as the saying goes, is local, it is increasingly true that MPs sit in our national Parliament elected by locals to pronounce on international issues. I used to try not to meddle in international matters, as they are way bigger than anything I as a backbencher can ever resolve.
As a post-expenses-scandal MP and given security threats I never post on social media when abroad
When Narendra Modi came to address MPs in the same Westminster Hall dating to 1097, where Queen Elizabeth II laid in state, I had constituents emailing asking me to attend and heed the words of the largest democracy in the world’s heard of state and others telling me to stay away.
I opted out, not wanting to offend. With Gaza however unfolding in real time and the huge numbers who email MPs on the subject it's impossible not to become dragged in.
Of course any country should welcome MPs whether they cheerlead the present regime or not. Israel, the much vaunted only democracy in the Middle East, appears to be behaving outside norms of normal democratic state if it doesn't want anyone to see what goes on there. Journalists and all westerners have effectively been banned from Gaza for some time now.
Kemi Badenoch stirring to make this a party political issue is deeply unbecoming and shows how unfit she is to lead her party. Substitute in the word “China” or “Russia” for Israel for turning away Tory MPs and would she be saying the same?
Yes countries do have the right to turn away terrorists and those whip up hatred but this was not Abtisam and Yuan who are the most mild mannered MPs I know. At least when I was due to be part of a trip with MPs in 2016 to India and a pro-Kashmir Tory MPs was shunned by the Indians it was at the visa granting stage not at the airport once we’d flown in. The whole trip was cancelled in solidarity.
Foreign travel in recess periods does make MPs better informed. As a post-expenses-scandal MP and given security threats I never post on social media when abroad. This trip in question cost the taxpayer nothing as it was funded by two charities. I was offered a place on it too but my 2017 experience — a barrage of extra questions then being made to step aside to another area of the airport where I was made to undress before being calmly pointed to the steps of my plane after getting flustered — has made me never return, which maybe was the aim.
Rupa Huq is the MP for Acton Central
