When the Israeli government decided to block me and eleven other British MPs from setting foot in its territory, I felt something between anger and recognition. I have spent enough time in Palestine to understand what that kind of decision really means. It is the same authority that decides whether a child can cross a checkpoint, whether a farmer can reach their olive trees, whether a student can attend class, whether a family can return to the home they were forced to leave, and whether a journalist can tell the truth. Over my lifetime, it has been my privilege to visit Palestine several times, and each visit left a mark inside me that I will never lose. I have seen the endless checkpoints, the watchtowers that loom over the sky, the soldiers who seem to treat ordinary daily movement as a crime, and the Palestinian men, women, and children who wait patiently under the sun and rain for permission to live their own lives. I have witnessed arbitrary arrests, expulsions, and the slow, systematic destruction of homes that remember those who were born in them. The Israeli occupation dictates who can move and who cannot, who belongs and who can be cast out, and it strips away any vestige of autonomy, citizenship, or safety. To be told by this government that I am unwelcome in a country I am not even seeking to enter as a state on my own terms is not a surprise; it is a reminder that power in that part of the world is still too often exercised from above, with the purpose of seeing who can be silenced next. But I do not lose sleep over Israel’s disapproval of me. It is not my role to be approved of by the state that enforces the very occupation I am called to oppose. If anything, the ban only illuminated how lonely tolerance it has for dissent, and how desperately it must keep out all witnesses it cannot control.
The deeper issue, of course, is not what happens to British members of parliament. It is what happens, every single day, to Palestinians. In Gaza, the Israeli military does not simply control borders and movement in the abstract; it controls practical matters of existence, from what food may enter, to whether fuel, medicine, and clean water are available at all, to whether people can flee when the bombs inevitably fall. The recent illegal blocking of aid has produced mass starvation, children with hunger in their eyes, and people drinking water that is not clean enough to survive on; and the displacement has been continued and forced until the land feels empty of the very people who have called it home. An independent UN commission has described the situation in Gaza as genocide, and Israel has responded not with accountability but with a war of intimidation. It has denied entry to UN investigators. It has denied entry to many international journalists. It does not want the world to know the whole of what has been done, because what has been done would be acknowledged only as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has refused to allow Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes; refugees who are still alive still cannot go home, have no way to reclaim their key, no way to walk their street, and no way to see the faces of the neighbors their families once shared. I am sorry that so much of my lifetime has been spent telling these stories, and I will not stop telling them. I object, in the strongest terms I can use, to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians themselves, to the routine degradation of their lives, to the theft of their freedom of movement, to the constant violence of being treated as a problem you can control instead of a human life you can honor. I object even more strongly to the dominance of this colonial game: this attempt to hide themselves from accountability for apartheid, occupation, and genocide through fortress gates, visa bans, and media restrictions. The scandal is not that a British MP was banned. The scandal is not the enormous and suspicious legal effort that made it possible, and the scandal is that the war continues, and the silence continues, and the world still refuses to see this clearly enough and act.
I am not surprised that the ban appears to be connected to the UK’s decision, long delayed but nonetheless welcome, to place sanctions on Israel’s illegal settlement goods. For years we have known that settlements in the occupied West Bank are not merely an unfortunate side effect of deeper issue, but a direct violation of international law. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful, and it imposed on states, including the UK, legal obligations to refrain from aiding or assisting that illegal occupation. The government’s first decision to impose sanctions is a positive development, a step toward the obligations we have always been ignoring, but it should not be allowed to stand alone. The sanctions on settlement goods cannot be the whole picture because those goods are not produced in a vacuum; they are part of an integrated economy that sustains the occupation and makes it possible. But the UK does, any real change, will need to go much further: end trade with the settlements, end all military cooperation with Israel, end the sale of arms including the components that fly into the F-35 fighter after that, and reassess every official form of aid, assistance and legitimacy we give the Israeli government. I have called for this over and again, and I will continue to call for it. I also reiterate my demand that the UK government formally recognize what is happening in Gaza as genocide. That recognition matters because it is not just a legal category; it is a moral declaration that we will no longer use polite euphemisms, careful words, and foreign policy nuance while people are being gradually killed. We need an end to all arms sales and a public inquiry into the whole history of British complicity, because our country has not acted as innocent bystander. It has been present, profitable and politically acceptable; that has to be examined openly. The ban on myself and my colleagues is, in some strange way, a confirmation that our government’s action matters enough to provoke a reaction, but it also shows that Israel’s influence refuses to be restrained by the law and persists until every last institution finally names them out loud.
The real purpose of this ban is not difficult to understand. Israel knows that when British members of Parliament, like many others before, go to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, we go as witnesses. We will not simply accept an official narrative; we will see the towns of houses with broken doors, we will listen to families who have lost everything, and we will meet the people who are enduring state-backed settler violence. Since October 2023, the UK has seen a worrying and increasing already horrifying wave of settler violence, and endless ordinary Palestinians have been expelled from their villages by armed groups that seem to operate with the sympathy of the state. If we cannot visit, if the independent journalists cannot enter, if UN investigators are threatened, then the only image left is the one Israel wants to project: a story of security, order, rights and plans. But the ban is also a measure of defeat. I see it as proof that Israeli leaders and their supporters are losing the battle for the hearts of the globe. They see the solidarity calls in London, in the universities, in the union halls, in the art, in the streets, in the pictures posted by ordinary people around world. The celebrations of persistence, however crude, grow from the awareness that every increased attempt to silence critics is a sign that they have not been silenced. They are losing public support, losing legal arguments, losing political allies, and losing the ability to present their actions as anything other than what they are: prolonged occupation and administration. So they tell themselves that banning MPs will somehow make the international movement disappear, and it does not. I have lost count of the number of demonstrations I have stood on in solidarity with Palestine; I have spoken at gatherings large and small, and I have tried to refuse to make of Palestine a decorative cause. I carry the memory of the real, particular people I have met when I speak. I try to quote at least one Palestinian in every speech I give. Their testimony is not a rhetorical type; it is fact. I do not treat their stories as it happens then far away, but as a moral shock has considered not diminished, and a call that must answer.
And all of this, the reason why the bans and flights and security checks do not have the final word is because Palestine is not just a place of horror. In the same visits that I have seen the checkpoints, the soldiers, and the walls, I have also seen the music, the art, the poetry, the love that people make in the broken spaces, the weddings that happen anyway, the jokes that escape from dark things, the children who perform and recite multiple languages, the old men who stay and give you their cup of tea, the women who are exhausted and still laugh, the streets alive with stubborn life. It is always surprising to the world when people in suffering make a beautiful event still, but they do. The violence is not the whole story, and if you let it be the whole story, you allow the occupier to decide what the Palestinian story is. You participate in the dispossession of their past and the theft of their future. That is why I talk not only about what has been destroyed, the checkpoints, the armed settlers, the child hunger, but also about what will continue, apparently because it cannot be crushed. I am not interested in being given a tour of apartheid. I don’t want the muted, safe, official version. I want to see the truth, and I want to see how they live with it. I want to be there to know what was before, what is now, not only so I can be returned the next time a speech is made, but so that I can understand precisely why the demand for freedom is not a favor, not a gift, but a right. The Israeli government can ban me, but it cannot ban me from saying that what is happening is genocide. It cannot forbid my words, my convictions, the memory of the people I have met, or the testimony of the society I carry in the folds of my travel documents.
So I finish this again where I often finish: with hope. It is not a gentle hope; it is the patient hope of a people who have been denied every basic thing but not their desire for life itself. It has been many years now since I stood in Palestine, but in my body I still feel the warmth of the visits, the curious press of young hands, the looks of quiet resistance that mean we are still here, you can’t erase us. Israel may refuse my entry, but I will always refuse to allow those who have not seen the world to be shut out entirely. I will always refuse to treat the end of this occupation as something far away. It is not only a political necessity; it is a moral and human necessity. The only path to any real security, peace, and equality is to end the occupation, to allow Palestinians their right to return, to let them live without checkpoints, without armed settlers, without tomorrow; to let them vote, move, build homes, and love, time, and opportunities. I will not be silenced by a visa ban. I will not be distracted by the official image. And until the walls come home and right becomes possible, I will stand with them, in the court of law, in the court of public opinion, in the streets and in the council rooms, with my heart open and my words full of their story. I haven’t given up hope that one day, and I won’t. One day I will be allowed to step back into a free and independent Palestine, return to the memory of the children I once knew, and see them grown with happiness, kindness, and the freedom they have always deserved.
