EIS President Adam Sutcliffe provides a personal account of a recent trip with an international trade union delegation to the Middle East.

Quite some time ago, the EIS Council agreed to support an Education International programme to fund training for Palestinian teachers through their union, the General Palestine Teachers’ Union (led by the indefatigable Saed Erziqat, without whose assistance this solidarity mission would not have been possible), in online and emotional support learning.

As a result, the EIS was invited to participate as part of a 14 strong delegation of teaching unions from Spain, Portugal, UK, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, the Netherlands, Argentina, Italy and Canda who had answered the call from EI.

Our plan was to travel from Jordan through Israel into Ramallah where we were to take part in an event for the International Day of Education (24th January) and to celebrate the graduation of teachers who had completed the training scheme our unions had helped to fund.

Due to flight arrival times, I arrived in Amman a day before we were due to travel to Palestine, so along with other members of the delegation I took the opportunity to visit the old Roman Citadel which sits atop a hill above the downtown area of Amman. We then wandered through the Souq Al-Sukar where we got a wonderful flavour of the spices and foods that we were going to try during our visit.

By the Friday morning the whole delegation had arrived, and we jumped in a bus to take us to the Jordan River / Sheikh Hussein border crossing. When I saw the road signs for the Dead Sea, I got childishly excited as I looked at my phone’s compass as the altimeter began to show negative readings as we descended below sea level; we reached -373.8m, what a thrill!

On arrival at the Jordanian side, we got off the bus, went through security and had our passports processed with exit stamps. We then boarded a shuttle bus to take us to the Israeli border post. On descending this bus, we joined what could only be described as a mass scrum to pass through security; there were hundreds of pilgrims, all heading to Jerusalem, and only a narrow doorway to funnel everyone into the queue for the scanners.

Once through security though was where our problems started. As we were travelling as a group we each gave our passports in at one of the booths. And then we waited. Eventually a young Israeli soldier came out and asked to speak to Ed Harlow, President of the NEU (National Education Union). Another soldier came across wanting to speak to Jo Grady, General Secretary of the UCU (University and Colleges Union).

Both were questioned in full view of everyone in this processing hall for at least half an hour, with the soldiers making notes of responses on a clipboard. Once they were done with Jo and Ed, the soldiers returned to an office somewhere for a while.

They returned to further question Ed and Jo, but this time they had obviously done some research as they were looking at information on their phones. When they came out a third time, they wanted to speak to Magope Maphila, President of SADTU (South African Democratic Teachers’ Union) and David Edwards, General Secretary of EI (Education International).

Once again, they were questioned / interrogated at length. Aside from asking our brothers and sister why they were passing through Israel they wanted information about political connections to the UK Labour party or the ANC (African National Congress), and any connections with Palestinians. They looked at contacts in phones and even made calls to one delegate’s Palestinian friend.

These soldiers kept insisting that we were lying about the reasons for our travel to the Ramallah, despite possessing invitations from the GPTU and Palestinian diplomats having smoothed the way with their Israeli counterparts; they insisted that we were travelling to Gaza to give money to those living there (as if that would have been a bad thing!).

Eventually there were no more questions and one of the soldiers informed us that we wouldn’t be passing through because we hadn’t had approval from the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism pursuant to legislation enacted at the start of January regarding international NGOs primarily engaged in activities with Palestinian residents.

There was no appeal, no discussion and they still had our passports. We had been there for around 5 hours already and we knew the border crossing closed early on Friday. Eventually, after another hour of waiting, 3 border security guards emerged each bearing a pile of passports.

They called out our names to check we were there. We were then all led out of the arrivals hall and onto a waiting bus and our passports were handed to the bus driver. We were driven back to the Jordanian border post, had to go through security and get our passports stamped once again. Thankfully the wonderful Saed had been able to arrange taxis to take us back to Amman.

Whilst what happened to us was concerning and inconvenient it is but a snapshot of how the daily lives of Palestinians are controlled and disrupted by the occupying state of Israel.

At the time we all thought that our group had been targeted and indeed a couple of weeks later a delegation from the BWI (Building and Wood Workers International) was denied onward travel at the same crossing for the same reasons.

Even though trade unionist delegations are not NGOs it would seem that the Israeli state is deliberately preventing them from showing solidarity with sister unions in Palestine.

We were obviously incredibly disappointed not to have been able to celebrate with our Palestinian sisters and brothers, but we were able to join the Zoom call of the event, and we sent individual and group video messages of solidarity.

Over the next two days we were also honoured to meet with Dr Mohammad Stayyeh, former Prime Minster of Palestine, Dr Nafieh Assad, Vice Minister of Education and Dr Julia Dicum, Director of Education at UNRWA. They each spoke proudly of Palestinian resilience but also of the need for international solidarity with Palestinians to increase the pressure on Israel.

It is safe to say that this was a trip that will stay with me for the rest of my life. With no exaggeration for that brief period at the Jordan / Israel border I felt what it is to be utterly powerless and I can only imagine how that must feel when powerlessness is your quotidian.