Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestine Mission to the UK, struggled to contain his irritation at the line of questioning from some members of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.
“It gets me heated when I hear this,” he said, as he appeared on Tuesday in the Grimond Room in parliament’s Portcullis House, across the road from Big Ben. The committee had been hearing from Israel and Palestine-linked voices on what more Britain could do to help bring about peace.
Zomlot had just been asked by veteran Conservative MP John Whittingdale how the “deradicalisation of the Palestinian people” might be achieved. Some Palestinian diplomats had celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians, Whittingdale alleged.
The Palestinian diplomat sitting in front of him said he hadn’t seen any of that. His voice boomed around the hushed committee room as he listed the many atrocities suffered by innocent Palestinians during Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza. His burly minders sitting in the back row nodded along.
“Do you unequivocally condemn the October 7th attack?” asked Whittingdale, narrowing his eyes.
Zomlot appeared to equivocate for a minute, before eventually declaring that he condemned all breaches of international humanitarian law. “[But] you cannot be half committed to legality,” he said. October 7th had been used as “a pretext to slaughter our people”.
A woman sat quietly behind Zomlot as he gave his evidence. She remained impassive as he grew angry over what he said were British declarations of “shared values” with Israel: “Come out of the closet and tell us what are these values? The shared value of supremacy?”
She also did not react as Zomlot held another frosty exchange over hostages with committee member Matthew Patrick, a Labour MP and Jewish man who swore his oath to parliament on the Torah. Patrick had asked why the Red Cross was not allowed to visit Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
“They should [be allowed],” said Zomlot, adding that the Red Cross should also be sent in to visit “Palestinian hostages” languishing in Israeli jails. When his evidence ended, the Palestinian delegation marched from the room. The woman who had sat behind Zomlot then took his seat.
Her name was Sharone Lifschitz, a British-Israeli film-maker whose elderly parents were taken hostage on October 7th from Nir Oz kibbutz. Lifschitz’s mother, 86-year-old Yocheved Lifschitz, was freed after 17 days and notably was filmed shaking hands with one of her Hamas captors as he handed her over.
“Knowing my mum, it was just an ordinary thing to do,” said Sharone Lifschitz. “I’m glad that she came back still herself.”
She implored the committee to “look at the human beings beyond the conflict”. She said she was “surprised at the gentleman who sat here before me,” before her evidence was interrupted by a ringing bell to signify MPs were required in the Commons chamber for a vote.
When the hearing resumed 15 minutes later, Lifschitz recalled how her mother said if Jewish people had made peace with Germans, they could make peace with Palestinians. Meanwhile, her 84-year-old father Oded was still in Hamas captivity. “I don’t know if he is alive or dead.”
She said her enemy was not Palestinians, but “hate”. Yet Lifschitz, a British citizen, said she feared “hate was washing over the streets of the UK in a way she could not imagine”.
She didn’t explain this point further, but it may have been a reference to huge pro-Palestinian marches that have filled London over the past 14 months. Organisers have insisted they were simply marching for peace and justice for Palestinians. Critics, including some Conservative politicians and British-Jewish groups, have alleged the marches included some displays of anti-Semitism.
“You want peace in the Middle East?” said Lifschitz, addressing the committee chair, Labour’s Emily Thornberry. “[But] I don’t feel there is peace happening here [in Britain].”
Adam Rose, a British lawyer who has worked with families of British-linked Israelis caught up in the Hamas attack, told the committee the UK should appoint a special envoy for the hostages. He said whatever the government had been doing for 14 months “was not working” and needed to change.
Lifschitz recalled how she had previously felt sorry for the family of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen who had been imprisoned in Iran for six years to 2022 on trumped up spying charges. Lifschitz said she had watched as the UK did everything it could to bring her back.
“I used to think – ‘this is terrible’. Then one day last October I was on my way to pick up a new puppy and I got a phone call [about her parents’ kidnap ], and now my life is turned on its head. What is the responsibility of the UK government for British citizens who have been taken hostage [by Hamas]?”
Her parents were not British citizens, but still, they had been “taken in their pyjamas”.
Emily Damari (28) is the last British citizen believed to be alive and still held by Hamas. Last week her mother, Mandy Damari, urged the British government to provide “solutions, not sympathy”.
Meanwhile, the committee’s inquiry into what the UK should do continues, as does the suffering of war-ravaged Palestinians alongside the agony of the families of hostages.
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