Sarah Home Safely After Israel/Palestine Trip

4.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 22nd Apr 2008

Sarah Teather visited Israel and the Palestinian territories

Local Liberal Democrat Brent MP Sarah Teather experienced the violent dangers of the Israel-Palestinian conflict first hand on a trip to the region this week when her delegation came under rocket fire as they were leaving Gaza.

Sarah was visiting the region with a delegation of MPs to see first hand the humanitarian impact of the situation on civilians. She visited the Israeli town of Sderot, and Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, including Ramallah and Bethlehem.

The delegation of MPs was attempting to leave Gaza with the UN when the Erez terminal crossing came under fire from kassam rockets around 4pm on Monday 14 April. The first rocket lay unexploded on the road leaving them stranded a mile from the checkpoint for a couple of hours and the second went overhead as they got to the terminal building, exploding yards away from the MPs.

Local Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East Sarah Teather said:

"It was a hairy moment and reminded me how many people in the region experience awful violence and fear every day of their lives.

"What I experienced at the Erez checkpoint was a small glimpse into the suffering and terror that people in the Israeli town of Sderot feel every day as they are bombarded by kassam rockets by extremists.

"But the firing of these rockets and the misery of Sderot is being used to justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, both in Gaza and the West Bank.

"I saw unimaginable suffering in Gaza. Gaza is on the brink of humanitarian disaster. I saw teenagers whose limbs had been blown off in Israeli military retaliation for Palestinian extremist rocket firing, a raw sewage lake the size of a village, families living in slum conditions because concrete is not allowed across the border to repair their home.

"I was deeply upset by what I saw in Gaza.

"I shall be pressing Gordon Brown to put pressure on the Israeli government to end the siege of Gaza. The international community must come together on this issue. At the very least it is essential that humanitarian exchange of people, drugs and equipment across the border begins properly immediately."