Two British Labour MPs who were travelling to the occupied West Bank say they have been denied entry into Israel, BBC reported on Wednesday.
Simon Opher and Peter Prinsley were travelling in a parliamentary delegation to see medical and humanitarian work being carried out by organizations including Medical Aid for Palestinians, the news channel reported on its website.
In a joint statement the two MPs said it was “deeply regrettable” that Israeli authorities had “prevented them from seeing first-hand the grave challenges facing medical facilities in the region.”
A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office said: “It is totally unacceptable and deeply concerning that yet again two British MPs have been denied entry to the occupied Palestinian territories by Israel.”
“Minister [Hamish] Falconer and officials have remained in contact with the MPs affected throughout. We are clear with Israel that this is no way to treat British Parliamentarians,” the spokesperson added.
The two MPs were crossing into Israel from Jordan on Monday on a three-day visit organized by the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) when they were stopped by Israeli authorities.
Opher told the BBC they were held in a passport office before being handed a “legal form insisting that we leave the country” and then “escorted to a bus” back to Jordan.
The Stroud MP said he was told they were not being admitted on “public order” grounds and that representations from the Foreign Office to Israeli authorities had been rejected.
He added: “It's very disappointing. We are both doctors and we were really just going to look at healthcare facilities in the West Bank to see if there was anything we could do to support them.”
“We weren't in any way trying to undermine the Israelis, just trying to see what we could do in the West Bank” where, he said, “they had been told healthcare was getting increasingly difficult.”
They had also been due to meet the British Consul General in Jerusalem as part of the visit, as well as meeting Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations.
Chris Doyle, the Director of CAABU, told the BBC that it had been organizing trips for parliamentarians for many years and that recent denials of entry were “regrettable.”
He said it was “important that British politicians get to see the situation on the ground at a very serious time to determine what's going on. It allows them to assess that situation and British policy towards it.”
Earlier this year, two other Labor MPs, Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang, were denied entry to Israel in April on another visit organized by the same organization.
At the time Israeli authorities said the two MPs had “accused Israel of false claims” and were “actively involved in promoting sanctions against Israeli ministers.”
Mohamed and Yang said: “Parliamentarians should feel free to speak truthful in the House of Commons, without fear of being targeted.”
The then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy described the move by Israel as “unacceptable, counterproductive and deeply concerning.”
Meanwhile, the first group of severely ill children have arrived in the UK from Gaza for urgent specialist medical care, the UK government has confirmed on Wednesday.
It said a cross-government taskforce has been working over recent weeks to co-ordinate the evacuation of these children.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that it had supported the medical evacuations of 10 “critical” children from Gaza to the UK. These children were evacuated with 50 companions, the WHO said.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Wednesday the healthcare system in Gaza had been “decimated and hospitals are no longer functioning” with severely ill children “unable to get the medical care they need to survive.”
She called for the protection of medical infrastructure and health workers in Gaza, as well as a huge increase in medicines and supplies to be allowed in.
Officials said the children and their immediate family had been evacuated from Gaza to Jordan, where they were supported by British Embassy staff as they underwent security checks before their arrival in the UK.
