His mother had not returned to Jerusalem since the family fled all those years ago, but, with Moran, she had visited the city and crossed the West Bank under the protection of Jordan’s diplomatic plates.
“She remembered what it had been like to cross the level crossings, and they took her shoes and threw them in a warehouse. She was just afraid of reliving some of those memories.
It was then that Moran first met members of his extended family – cousins, cousins of cousins. “Arab families are very large… The family I have in Gaza shelters in a church. They make do with one meal a day and one shower a week. They literally can’t move. And it’s heartbreaking that they can’t. I wake up every morning afraid that I won’t be able to answer the question ‘How are they?’ by saying ‘They’re alive.’
The situation is desperate. We are, she says, far from a cease-fire. “Most conflicts end with a ceasefire, but a ceasefire does not mean the end of the war, or the conflict either. » According to her, this problem can only be solved by a two-state solution.
“Any sort of transition from this point cannot include Hamas. It’s clear. Likewise, if you want the Arab states to be involved, Netanyahu cannot be included either.
“But Hamas feeds on an idea, and it’s an idea that only exists because we don’t have a Palestinian state. And the only way to bring Hamas to its knees is to propose this two-state solution, because that is ultimately the security answer for both Palestine and Israel.
Moran visited Israel last year with the Lib Dems Friends of Israel.
“We wanted to better understand the political sphere in Israel and the Jewish diaspora there and how they are connected. And I think it also allowed me to understand myself better, to understand the Israeli narrative of its past as a parallel narrative to the Palestinian narrative, and to understand that for these peoples, both are right.
“75 years this year marks both the greatest catastrophe for the Palestinian people, when thousands were killed and millions displaced, and at the same time for the Jewish people, it is the year of hope, when he finally found his refuge after thousands of years of suffering. persecution.”
On his desk is a memoir written by his great-grandfather Wasif Jawhariyyeh, the Storyteller of Jerusalem, describing life in the city from the years of the Ottoman Empire to the British Mandate. An important figure in the city’s Greek Orthodox community, he was employed by the British to help them govern during the Mandate era.
“One of the beauties of this book,” says Moran, “is that it reminds us that Jews, Muslims and Christians once lived side by side in brotherhood, in laughter; they shared each other’s vacations. We have so much more in common. There was a version of a shared story that we don’t tell.
“I believe that Palestinians should learn Israeli history, alongside their own, without minimizing theirs, and vice versa. And that is how you will begin to fill in that understanding.
Understanding also appears limited on the ground in Britain, where the situation risks becoming even more incendiary.
“If we don’t start changing the narrative to help calm things down,” Moran says, “then there’s a concern that it’s going to lead to some really bad places on the streets.” We have seen a record number of complaints filed with the police, both for anti-Semitism And Islamophobiaand we need to understand that the fear they feel is real, and we all have a role to play in alleviating that.
People who tear down posters of Israeli hostages are “disgusting,” she says. “I condemned that.” And police in Manchester and London (where the Met explained officers were taking steps “to avoid community tensions”) doing the same thing, is “not helpful”.
According to her, Suella Braverman is not talking about “hateful marches” either.
People who chant “from the river to the sea,” she said, “are often referring to the 1967 borders. They are not suggesting the elimination of Israel. But that’s some people’s interpretation, and I think people shouldn’t say that if it’s going to cause that kind of offense.
“Are there people at the extremes who deliberately choose to hijack (marches)? Absolutely. But anyone who supports Hamas should be arrested. It’s clear.”
Does she think the police have been strong enough to enforce the law on this?
“I can only comment on where I have had direct contact with them, namely Oxfordshire Police, who have taken an incredibly sensitive approach to this and have done all they can to reassure the Jewish community there – just like me – that we are at their side.
The day after I met Moran, she attended a candlelight peace vigil in Oxford, attended by more than 200 people; a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of thousands of people marching through the streets of British cities.
“We are here of all faiths and none to lean on each other,” Moran told the crowd. “We don’t have to accept divisive rhetoric – we can choose to stay on the side of humanity. »
“We have to look for hope,” she told me, “we have to look for light, and the only thing I can achieve is that from all this comes an effort on the part of the whole world. that we never want to see that again.
Like every other MP she spoke with, this issue earned her the largest mailbag ever received from her constituents.
“The way this has won the hearts and minds of the British public is extraordinary – and overall they also reject these extremes and want to come together in solidarity and peace. And I think it’s my responsibility to talk about it.
But at the same time, she adds, she is an MP and the rest of the day doesn’t stop. For the first time in our conversation, she allows herself to laugh. “The Botley interchange on the A34 is never far from my mind.”
