Remember me
Kate Nevens, a Green MSP, was detained and interrogated after trying to cross from Jordan into occupied Palestine on Monday, October 26 along with a delegation of other activists and parliamentarians – including the SNP MP Lara Bird and Labour MP Clive Lewis.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the UK Government was “deeply concerned” about the detentions and had “raised this issue with the Israeli authorities”.
However, the Israeli government then claimed that “routine questioning by border agents revealed that their initially provided itinerary did not reflect their actual plans, which included political activities and intentional provocation for social media clout”.
“Like any sovereign state, Israel has the right and responsibility to verify the identity, intentions and activities of individuals seeking to enter its territory,” the statement added.
Speaking exclusively to The National podcast after returning to Scotland, Nevens said the Israeli government’s statement was part of a “campaign of misinformation and disinformation”.
READ MORE: Detained SNP MP raises alarm over Israel’s plans for occupied West Bank
“They were trying to intimidate me,” she said. “I do think they were trying to make sure that I didn't come back [to Palestine], make sure that when I returned to Scotland, I would tell everyone not to go.
“I think they were trying to create a disorientating, intimidating process.”
Asked if she had been aware that the Israeli authorities could prevent her entry to Palestine, and that could make headlines, Nevens accepted that she had known that was a “strong possibility”.
“We were absolutely intending on trying to get into the West Bank, but yes, we all knew that this was a possibility,” she said.
“Having people with a higher profile witness the abuses that are happening in Palestine, that's what we wanted to do.
“We wanted to be able to say, ‘We were there as elected reps in the UK and we could see the violence being enacted against Palestinians’. And yes, absolutely, that's also about getting a media story.”
Nevens, a former Middle East Manager for the think tank Chatham House, had visited Palestine before – and said that the Israeli authorities had known “everything” that she did on a previous visit. “It was really alarming,” she added.
Nevens was refused entry to the West Bank on the same day that a UN report said that Israel had committed crimes of "extermination, persecution, torture, rape and sexual violence" in the region, as well as continuing a genocide in Gaza.
She said that she believed Israel has “moved from a position where what I saw when I was there 12 years ago was the exhaustion of the population; what we're seeing now is ethnic cleansing”.
“It's an illegal occupation,” Nevens said. “It is a functional occupation that entirely controls everyone's movement.
READ MORE: BBC reveals flood of complaints after Palestinians left out of Zionism debate
“That's much more problematic for Palestinians than anyone like me that's trying to do a week-long visit. That means you can't visit your family members, it means you can't get people to hospital. In normal times, when less checkpoints are closed, your routes are really circuitous.
“It takes you five, six times as long to get to a hospital, to get to work, to get to school. And that is the point, that's the purpose of the occupation, right?
“They were trying to exhaust us over eight hours. They're trying to exhaust the Palestinian population, and actually right now that's moved into slow ethnic cleansing.”
In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian territories like Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank was “illegal”.
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