Reflections on my first visit to Israel and the West Bank

I’ve just spent just four days in Israel and the West Bank – my first visit there.

It was a harrowing privilege to spend time in the Kfar Aza Kibbutz, where dozens of defenceless Israelis had been slaughtered in their homes, and then to meet with Rafaela Triestman, a survivor of the Nova festival massacre – whose boyfriend was murdered just yards ahead of her, in a shelter that offered no sanctuary against murderous terrorists.

Our time meeting Israeli politicians from government and opposition, Arab Israelis, left-leaning academics, journalists of varying degrees of scepticism towards the government, officials overseeing aid to Gaza and others left me with a deep sense of an Israel that remains traumatised by the pogrom of 7 October.  Hopes for a two-state solution seem extremely distant.  Even the most liberal of politicians has no appetite for extoling the virtues of a separate Palestinian state at a time when fear, grief, anger and a determination to ensure security at all costs, hold sway.

I found also a deep sense of betrayal from many that western liberal democracies had been so quick to condemn Israel, and so reluctant to understand.  I visited Auschwitz in 2009.  I knew about the Holocaust before then of course, but that visit didn’t just break my heart, it filled me with a sense of fury of the wickedness done by human beings to human beings.  It also clarified my understanding of why a homeland for the Jewish people is not only justified, but essential.  I had those views powerfully confirmed as we visited the holocaust memorial museum at Yad Vashem last week.

Our visit to the West Bank also made me angry.  The Palestinian people deserve a homeland too.  They also deserve far better leaders than the murderous bigots in charge of Gaza, and the largely corrupt regime in charge of the West Bank.  Nevertheless, it was a privilege to meet the Mayor of Ramallah, a man who seemed decent, committed to serving his community and angry at the impoverishment delivered on his people by an Israeli government that seems to be wilfully strangling the economy of the West Bank, and foolishly playing into the hands of the extremists.  We met also with Palestinian voices from business and civil society whose anger at the treatment of their people by the Israeli government was visceral and justified

I got the chance to challenge senior government politicians on the ever increasing number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank – a movement that can only be seen as a deliberate attempt to prevent the realisation of the two state solution.

Amongst the many Palestinian voices we heard was one man who was standing in the coming municipal elections in the West Bank in April.  A brave and inspirational character.  He said, ‘the Israelis need security and we need freedom and dignity…. The Jews have always been in this land, they belong here…but they have never been alone in this land.  We have always been here too.  We need to shift the relationship from conflict to partnership.’

This was our last meeting before we headed home, and it was the conversation that filled me with the greatest hope.

Tim Farron is the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale