AN Irish MEP was among a delegation refused entry to Israel and the West Bank on Monday.
Sinn Fein MEP Lynn Boylan, who is chair of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Palestine, said she was detained on arrival at Ben Gurion Airport.
She said French MEP Rima Hassan and two senior civil servants travelling with the delegation were also detained and questioned before being returned to Brussels.
Ms Boylan said the incident was an “insult to all members of the EU”.
She said the four-person group was on an “official mission” to Palestine, where they were going to stay in East Jerusalem until Thursday evening.
Ms Boylan said: “We were due to meet with members of the Knesset, we were due to meet with Israeli politicians as well. It’s about strengthening dialogue. It’s about constructive engagement – and we were prevented from doing our job yesterday.”
She said the visit had been approved by the European Parliament and co-ordinated with Israeli authorities by the EU embassy in Palestine in advance.
The delegation monitors EU policies towards Palestine, the Middle East Peace Process and the establishment of the two state-solution. It also scrutinises the use of EU funds for Palestine, including to UNRWA.
Both Ms Boylan and Ms Hassan are members of the Left group in the European Parliament, however the delegation is a cross-political grouping.
They were met at the door of the plane in Tel Aviv by several security officials and taken to an interrogation room for around an hour and 40 minutes, Ms Boylan said.
The Dublin MEP said their bags were searched and their phones, tablets, and passports were taken from them. Their bags were also searched.
She told RTE radio on Tuesday they were later escorted to a return plane.
She said: “We were stood there with, again, security around us, so that everybody boarding the plane were aware that we were, I suppose, ‘persons of interest’. We were the reason why their flight had been delayed.
“So they started to film us. Some of them shouted abuse at us, and then we were put onto the plane and we were separated.
“Myself and the two officials were together, but they put Ms Hassan down the very back of the plane on her own, at which point I objected and said I didn’t think it was safe for her to be sitting on her own down the back, but they refused to change and said that they called security if we challenged it.”
Ms Boylan said photographs of her and the other three members of the group have been spread on social media.
She said: “Whatever about being a politician, that’s very unfair on civil servants. They’re just there to do their job.
‘DEEPLY CONCERNING’
“It’s unprecedented that civil servants wouldn’t be allowed to continue on the mission.”
She added: “To stop the civil servants traveling and meeting up with the rest of the delegation, and then for those civil servants to have their their faces put out into the public domain is deeply concerning.”
Ms Boylan said her diplomatic passport, provided by Ireland, was not returned until she arrived back in Belgium.
She said they had not been given any reason as to why they were refused entry.
She added: “The EU was completely blindsided by the fact that we were going to be treated in this way.”
Asked if she believed her support for BDS may be the reason she was refused entry, Ms Boylan said: “If that was the case, they had months to refuse my admission.”
She further raised concerns about Israel’s handling of her data and privacy following the seizure of her phone and tablet, as well as her Irish diplomatic passport being taken for hours.
