It’s not every day you’re barked at by an 18-year-old Israeli army reservist with a machine gun slung across his chest, but that was exactly my experience — and seeing MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang turned away at Ben Gurion airport this week brought it all flooding back.
It happened to me years ago — long before the current war in Gaza — but the memory still makes my stomach turn. There’s something distinctly undignified about being singled out, subjected to intense questioning, and then quietly ushered to a different holding area while fellow passengers look on with a mixture of confusion and pity.
In my case, I was stopped on the way out, not even in. MPs Mohamed and Yang — both calm, thoughtful, and widely respected — were denied entry at the gate. They were on a delegation to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a region which, lacking its own airport, forces visitors through Tel Aviv. It’s not an unusual route — in fact, it’s the only one.
I was part of a similar parliamentary trip, a cross-party delegation staying in Ramallah, in Area A of the West Bank. Even then, with Israeli number plates on our transport to ease movement, we were frequently stopped and questioned at checkpoints. As one MP on the trip put it, “They don’t have freedom of movement here.”
I’ve always believed in grounding my politics in lived experience — whether that’s speaking to constituents affected by broken infrastructure in Ealing or visiting large-scale construction projects like Old Oak Common. And, similarly, travelling to conflict zones or politically sensitive regions gives lawmakers invaluable perspective. We’re elected locally, yes, but we’re asked to pronounce on international issues more than ever before.
I didn’t always think that way. For years, I avoided foreign affairs — believing they were far above my pay grade as a backbencher. But that changed as constituents increasingly began writing to me on issues in Kashmir, Syria, and now Gaza. During Narendra Modi’s 2015 address in Westminster Hall, I was torn: some constituents urged me to attend and listen to the leader of the world’s largest democracy; others implored me to boycott it. I chose to stay away.
But Gaza is different. It’s on our screens daily. We can’t just shrug and turn away.
Israel, which rightly prides itself on being a democracy, undermines that status when it turns away elected parliamentarians simply for wanting to see the situation on the ground. Journalists have been barred from Gaza for months now. MPs, it seems, are next. If the country’s leadership is confident in their actions, they should have nothing to hide.
Kemi Badenoch’s decision to make this a party-political issue is not only disappointing — it’s dangerous. Would she be defending the right of China or Russia to turn away Conservative MPs? I think not.
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Yes, every country has the sovereign right to deny entry to those who incite violence or pose a security risk. But that simply doesn’t apply here. Abtisam and Yuan are among the most measured and mild-mannered members of our parliamentary benches.
I recall a trip planned in 2016 — a delegation of MPs visiting India. When a pro-Kashmir Conservative MP was denied a visa, the whole trip was scrapped in solidarity. That’s how a mature democracy handles such situations.
Foreign travel during recess makes for better-informed legislators. And it’s worth noting that trips like these cost the taxpayer nothing — they’re funded by NGOs and charities. I was offered a place on the same trip this year but declined. My 2017 experience — the questions, the delay, the quiet room, being told to undress, and eventually being calmly shown the way back to the plane — was enough for a lifetime.
Maybe that was the goal all along.
