This week I tried to enter the illegally occupied West Bank, along with two other British parliamentarians and an international delegation of observers. We were all interrogated and detained by Israeli forces for nearly eight hours and finally prevented from crossing the border. Our unpleasant experience pales in comparison to the daily experience of Palestinians living under occupation.
Year after year, decade after decade, Palestinians have faced not simply inconvenience but a systematic attempt to eradicate their existence. We have seen a genocide in its most brutal form in Gaza. But in the West Bank we see a slow-motion form of ethnic cleansing, perpetrated by Israeli forces and their settler militias.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Israel last month to do the same in the occupied West Bank as “what we did in Gaza”. And so we came to shed light on Israel’s crimes, including the brutal attacks on olive harvesters which seek to deprive Palestinians of the livelihood that sustains them. As the suffering inflicted on Palestinians grows ever more extreme, so Israel moves to stop the outside world from bearing witness.
In the last 18 months, two British delegations of MPs have been turned away. Through three years of genocide in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists, with much evidence suggesting direct targeting. In the Hebron operation last week, Israeli forces used tear gas on journalists attempting to film the demolition of Palestinian homes.
The message is clear: the world must not see what is happening here. Our visit, organised by Global Justice Now, came at a critical time, just before Israeli elections and shortly after the United Kingdom announced new sanctions on Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. The elections have yet to produce a clear outcome, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could still be ousted from office.
We hope Netanyahu – a man who has perpetrated the most heinous war crimes – is removed from office. We hope he is made to answer for the genocide he has perpetrated. But sadly, we have no reason to believe that this will be the end of the suffering of the Palestinian people.
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