I have just returned from Israel. It was never going to be an easy trip, but I felt well prepared. In fact it turned out to be both more depressing and more uplifting than I had anticipated.

I was part of a visit arranged by ELNET. We were a group of 22 including 10 UK parliamentarians (Lord Peter Mandelson and Lord Michael Howard amongst us), plus 10 EU lawmakers and two journalists.

Day one saw us have a military briefing from the IDF: then a journey south to the Gaza border. There we went to Sderot (3 km from the border) and then Kibbutz Kfar Aza (practically on the border itself) – both locations had been devastated by the Hamas attack of 7th October. Back in Tel Aviv we met families of the hostages.

Day two saw us in Jerusalem. There we met with President Herzog, members of the Knesset (Parliament) and two very senior members of the security and war cabinet. We went to a hospital where we saw a remarkable young man (who was at the pop festival and who had been very badly wounded) and we saw the quite dramatic helipad on top of the Tel Aviv hospital where they ‘scoop and run’ injured soldiers directly from the battlefield to the trauma theatre of the hospital.

Both evenings were spent at dinner with high-ranking Israeli policy makers. Much has been written about the Israel-Gaza war so I will not rewrite what you are bound to have already read, what I will do is give my impressions and set out what was new to me.

The Israeli area adjoining Gaza is now a wasteland. I have been to towns and villages after major hurricanes and that is what it was like – plus very extensive burning and bloodstains all over the floors, walls, kitchen cabinets and furniture. Small things hit hard: kids bicycles mangled, BBQ grills smashed and of course homes totally and utterly devastated. You can almost hear the cries of anguish and pain from those being slaughtered and the shouts of triumph from Hamas. We have seen and heard it on the video footage, but to stand there in person is like being in a nightmare that is frozen in time. My blood ran cold.

You stand on a village street in Kibbutz Kfar Aza (now known as Death Road), you look at the carnage and at the same time to your left you see Gaza City, no more than a mile away across a field. Artillery booms, the ground you stand on shudders, machine guns rat-tat-tat and black smoke hovers over the buildings. You can smell and taste it in the air. At the same time in Gaza itself you know only too well, that there are thousands of innocent people who are also dying, and families whose lives have also been wrecked.

We had to wear bullet proof vests and helmets. The instructions were ‘if the sirens go off you have 15 seconds to run to a shelter; if you can’t see a shelter drop to the ground with your helmet on; if you can’t put your helmet on cover your head with your hands’. Luckily the sirens didn’t sound, but the instructions brought home to us just how serious the situation continues to be. The area contains many bomb shelters that had been built to protect people from Hamas rockets. No one expected Hamas terrorists to arrive early one Saturday morning with their guns and RPGs, totally equipped for mass murder.

Weeks before the attack, Hamas had held rallies by the border fence: they caused diversions by burning tyres and creating smoke – that enabled them to attach explosives with delayed timers to the fence itself, these were not spotted. The attackers were very well briefed – ordinary Gazans had worked in the Israeli towns and kibbutzim for many years, they knew who lived where, names, ages, even whether they had dogs. This was mass-murder made to order.

There’s a field called the car cemetery. Hundreds of cars piled up. Each had been burned with their occupants in them. For the first time ever pieces of cars had been buried in a Jewish cemetery because they couldn’t detach body parts from the metal, so fierce was the burning. There were 30 early morning revellers at the pop concert who were corralled together, doused with petrol and then incinerated. There was a baby whose fingers were cut off as souvenirs for the terrorists to take home. This wasn’t a war army to army – this was vile pre-meditated brutality reminiscent of another, but not too distant age.

I was shocked to learn that after Hamas’s attack that Saturday morning, many ordinary Gazans joined the invasion to loot, to kill and rape, to take hostages back to Gaza. Evil spilt from every direction. And we have all seen the footage of Gaza’s citizens celebrating in the streets when the hostages were brought to the Strip on that same day, some even half-naked young women who were spat upon and abused. I dread to think what is happening to the hostages now, still there, after nearly 100 days in captivity.

In a military briefing we were told that Yayah Sinwar and his thugs had hoped that they would advance towards Tel Aviv and that Hizbollah in the north and terrorists on the West Bank would join them. This hasn’t happened and despite the skirmishes I don’t believe it will. Also they had hoped that Israeli Arabs within Israel itself would join them in a mass Palestinian uprising, this didn’t happen either. In their quest to overrun Israel they failed.

We were honoured to meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog. He joined us for an hour. He talked about wider geo-political issues. And it is interesting that despite everything no country has broken off diplomatic relations with Israel. To me it was all summed up when I looked at the flight arrivals board at Ben Gurion International airport. The only foreign airline flying in from either North America or Western Europe was Delta, whereas BA, Virgin, Ryanair, EasyJet, American, Air Canada etc had all cried off. But who was it that were still flying into Israel? Emirates from Dubai; Etihad from Abu Dhabi; plus flights from Cairo, Amman, Bahrein and Morocco. What’s that telling us? When this is all over the Abraham Accords will prevail and relations between Israel and its neighbours (maybe even Saudi Arabia) will we hope grow and prosper.

The meeting with the senior politicians was to my mind disappointing. They came to talk to us and not to listen. Maybe they thought we had nothing to contribute (an common Israeli trait in my experience), but we made sense. We talked about the dangers of famine and disease in the Gaza Strip if the number of aid trucks doesn’t increase significantly. This is humanitarian aid and is desperately required. In my opinion Israel can do much more to supply Gaza with food and medicines and I fervently hope they will, soon.

We also talked about leadership. Not for me to rant here about my views on Netanyahu and the lunatics who form his government, but you can tell where I stand – Israel needs an election soon to get rid of these terrible politicians. And so too does Palestine. For years Palestine has been served by venal and corrupt politicians. Mahmoud Abbas is seven years older than me (and I am old): he is ineffective and is held in contempt by most Palestinians. The Palestinians need a team of young charismatic leaders who can chart a course towards a peaceful Palestinian state. My guess is that such leaders exist, but today are probably in Israeli jails and have blood on their hands. But as Peter Mandelson said, in Northern Ireland we British signed the Good Friday peace agreement with former terrorists who also had blood on their hands. Nelson Mandela was jailed as a terrorist, to say nothing of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Sometimes you have to negotiate with people who have nasty backgrounds. You don’t make peace with friends, only with enemies.

Of equal overwhelming sadness to visiting the devastated kibbutzim was meeting the families of the hostages. It’s now coming up to 100 days since their family members were kidnapped and bitter sadness and grief permeates all of them. We try to imagine what horrors pass through their minds, but we can’t, it’s too deep. But they were brave and spoke with great clarity and passion. It was hard to hold back the tears.

For me the most uplifting part of the trip was at the end. We visited a hospital in downtown Tel Aviv amidst the skyscrapers. We were taken to the very top of the building where there was a helipad – no place for vertigo. The charismatic trauma ICU doctor in charge told us about ‘scoop and run’. On the battlefields in Gaza they do not have mobile hospitals – very hard in dense urban areas. Instead severely wounded soldiers are strapped onto stretchers and evacuated by Blackhawk helicopters. The choppers fly to one of several fully equipped hospital landing pads – there the stretchers are placed onto lifts which rapidly descend to the hospital basement where the trauma ICU rooms are located. From battlefield to ICU theatre is 70 kilometres, the time it takes – less than 40 minutes. Totally amazing – Israel at its most creative and effective best. I only wish that others had been so swift of foot on October 7th. I still find it incomprehensible that it took so long for the IDF to come to the rescue.

Now I’m back in London, what do I think?

I am horrified to hear Israeli politicians now talking about Gazans being ‘voluntarily’ exiled to Africa and other places. Gaza belongs to Gazans and nowhere else – exile stinks of ethnic cleansing and we as Jews should have nothing to do with it. Gaza needs to be rebuilt by a coalition of the US, Europe and Arab states: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will have key roles – maybe even Qatar. What would be a disaster would be to let this current situation fester and for a re-run of 7th October 2023 to happen in 10 years time, that would bring no peace either to Israel or to Palestine. Whatever the outcome there can be no return to fortress Gaza, it has to be demilitarised.

I also am greatly saddened by the one sidedness of people’s attitudes to the conflict. There are Palestinians, Arabs and many others around the world who deny that the atrocities on 7th October ever took place. According to a report from Palestinian Survey Research 72% of the Palestinian public believe that Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7th attack was correct; and only 7% say Hamas committed atrocities against Israeli civilians. My eyes told me otherwise.

Equally there are many Israelis who blank out the carnage that is taking place in Gaza. Their focus is victory at any price, no diversions, no regrets. Most people on both sides have no interest in sharing the others’ pain – but pain is not exclusive. My daughter-in-law is half Palestinian and her sadness forces me to view the conflict from both points of view. Israel and Israelis are now united as one and everybody wants to get the job done – that means the elimination of Hamas as a fighting force and the return of the hostages. How can I disagree with that? But once done that’s where wisdom and statesmanship will be what counts. Several Israeli politicians told us to lift up our eyes and to stop sleepwalking: Hamas, ISIS and Al-Qaeda are all tarred with the same brush and they all seek to kill us – Jews first, then Christians.

I am as wedded to the two state solution as I have ever been. Netanyahu and his cronies hate the concept, but Israel has to look long term and create a safe, prosperous region for its people and the same for the people of a Palestinian state. Both need brave, visionary leaders – neither have them at the moment.

You would be inhumane not to weep at the brutal carnage wrought by Hamas on October 7th: never forget this it was they who started this war. But you’d also be equally inhumane not to weep for the killing of thousands of children in Gaza during the past few months. Both sides seem to have dehumanised each other: somehow, this mutual hatred has to stop.

I have one last evocative story to tell and it’s about the 24 year old young man we met at the Tel Aviv hospital. He had been at the pop concert with his friends when the terrorists arrived early that Saturday morning. He was shot three times in the arm and had literally to hold his injured arm with the other arm, both to keep it in place and to stop himself bleeding to death. He ran into the woods alone. He heard men shouting in Arabic and despite the pain and loss of blood escaped detection. Eventually, after four hours, he was rescued when he heard men speaking Hebrew and dared show himself to them – today his wounds have all but healed. He told us an amazing story: during world war two his own great-grandfather in Eastern Europe had been rounded up by the Nazis and put on a train. He managed to jump off and broke his arm in three places. He too ran into the woods and was eventually rescued by partisans. History repeating itself unexpectedly through the generations.

History repeating itself is all too often the Israel/Palestinian story. I passionately hope that somehow, out of all this sorrow, pain and mutual devastation, that a road to peace can be forged. If not, it is all set to repeat itself again as soon as those young Palestinian boys we see on the television news crying on the streets of Gaza become old enough to wield guns. And that could happen before we know it.

I am thankful to ELNET for arranging this powerful and all inclusive tour. Despite the misery I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

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