Teignbridge MP Richard Younger-Ross has spoken of his shock when experiencing first hand the widening gulf between Israelis and Palestinians. He also warned that treating the conflict as a distant problem will result in human misery and an unprecedented fuel crisis. Mr Younger-Ross, a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, was the only British parliamentarian to take part in a week-long trip to the Middle East organised by the Inter-religious and International Federation for World Peace. The trip was prompted by the most intense fighting the region has witnessed for decades, and Mr Younger-Ross met with those struggling to find a peaceful settlement. 'The aim was to talk with people on both sides and not to go in with a blinkered view that one side is right and one side is wrong,' he said. 'There's wrong on both sides.' He said that after meeting with 'a very mixed group' which included Palestinians, Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Christian Arabs he had found the situation 'horrifying'. 'We met people from the Bereaved Families Foundation, a body which brings together Palestinians and Israeli Jews in particular, and gets them to talk, side by side, to schools and other institutions about not blaming each other, but about their loss, about the need for dialogue between two different peoples,' he said. 'This is made more powerful when you consider that, earlier in the week, we had met with a well-educated young Jewish woman, trained as a peace activist, who had never sat down and talked with a Palestinian in 25 years of life. 'I was shocked to find that the Israeli population never meets or talks to the Palestinians and vice-versa. I find it absolutely horrifying.' Lessons learned during his stay will be employed on September 13 when his select committee next meets. 'I'm going to press the government to really engage with peace activists and to establish if our actions are actually inflaming the situation which, I would argue, they have to an extent,' he said. Mr Younger-Ross criticised the government for not recalling parliament to discuss the conflict and warned of the consequences, humanitarian and otherwise, if fundamentalists, such as Hezbollah, gained power in the region and took control of states such as Saudi Arabia. 'At that point we lose control of the oil,' he said. 'If we think it's expensive now, we would be back to rationing,' he said.
