Greg Smith writes about his trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority as part of a delegation of MPs...
Last week I was part of a delegation of MPs visiting Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Arriving under the shadow of terrorism, with multiple horrific attacks the week before in Tel Aviv, the evil of terrorism struck again during our visit with three Israelis murdered and a further 11 injured on 7th April. First and foremost my thoughts are with those killed and their families. These attacks were a painful reminder of the fragility of life in this wonderful country, where people – most especially of the Jewish faith – live with the knowledge there are those in territories and countries around them who quite literally do not believe they have a right to exist.
With Hamas in the Gaza Strip to Hezbollah in Lebanon, security and defence is rightly at the top of most political discussions across Israel. And rightly so. But what I saw and heard demonstrated this is done with far greater respect than the all too common and frankly lazy anti-Israel narratives suggest. Take the security barrier between Israel and the West Bank which was introduced by Israel to stem the flow of the daily suicide bombings that befell Israel during the Second Intifada. We were given a detailed tour by its architect, Col. Dany Tirza. This was not some arbitrary wall or fence, slicing through communities. But carefully constructed, with many concessions ensuring farmers were still able to access land either side of the barrier and children could still go to school on a different side to where they live; not to mention special gates to enable religious processions to continue between holy sites.
From the concrete shelters we saw in Sderot and Netiv Ha’asara, where when the siren goes local people have just 15 seconds to get inside for protection from Hamas rockets; to the sniper fire from Palestinian towns which shattered the peace in Israeli towns, I came to the strong conclusion Israel absolutely must be able to defend herself and the people who live there. As our guide commented after Col Tirza finished his presentation on the security barrier, “Dany undoubtedly saved my life.”
The trip also included visits in areas of the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority. This included meeting directly with the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in Ramallah. He made the Palestinian case eloquently and passionately, as you would expect any leader to. He spoke of peace – and that is commendable, but I cannot get over the casual reference to “martyrs” when discussing payments to families of Palestinians guilty of murdering Israelis; insisting on the use of the term “freedom fighters” to describing what everyone else would call terrorists; and accusing the hugely successful and significant Abraham Accords of having been a stunt to help President Trump’s re-election campaign. Of course there hasn’t been an election across the PA since 2006.
Moving away from security and defence issues, an area of the trip I took most from was around the dynamism of the Israeli economy. Starting with a briefing at Start Up Nation Central, a hub that connects and supports innovators across the country, helping them succeed – complete with Israeli developed vertical farming on the roof. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Israel and I hope the continuing trade negotiations, that were discussed over dinner with the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, can be as broad and deep as possible to harness this spirit for our own economy as well as the Israeli one. One individual company we visited has a direct connection to us here in Buckinghamshire. Healthy.io is a tech start up who have developed home tests for conditions such as kidney failure. They are already supplying Buckinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group and I have agreed to follow up with them to understand more about how their tech can save and prolong lives here in the UK, including a pitch to them to invest in Westcott or Silverstone Park if they are looking for more floor space in the UK for business expansion here.
Of course you can not understand Israel without first understanding the worst evil in the history of humanity, the Holocaust. On our final full day we visited Yad Vashem - the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre. We have all sat in history classrooms learning of the horrors of the calculated genocide of Jewish people by the Nazis, watched documentaries, attended memorial events and perhaps some visited the concentration camps across Europe. Yad Vashem takes that education and understanding to a whole new level. Impossible to hold back tears as you walk through the exhibition, culminating in the room of names, where every name of the Jewish people murdered by Hitler are recorded; and a separate Children’s Memorial - a tribute to the approximately 1.5 million Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust. It was an incredible honour to take part in a short ceremony at Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance, where my colleague Fay Jones MP laid a wreath on behalf of the delegation and I re-kindled the memorial flame.
Many more briefings, meetings and yes, some sightseeing, took place, with journalists, academics, officials from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and politicians. Too many to detail each one. It is a week I will never forget, in an incredible country and region I hope will find peace. But in the meantime I am left in no doubt at how important it is for Israel to be able to defend herself. Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, but with a buzzing and diverse population, must be secure in self-determination – looking to peace, but not at the sort of cost extremists that wish to see that existence wiped away demand. We in the UK must and should support that. Perhaps following the United States lead and moving our Embassy to Jerusalem would be a good start. And we in the UK must play our part in supporting this dynamic economy, producing world-beating technology, through new free trade deals.
I want to thank Conservative Friends of Israel for making this delegation possible. I am proud to call myself a friend of Israel – and look forward to visiting again.
