Sarah Champion MP to question use of tear gas near schools in West Bank

As the former Chief Executive of North Anston's Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice, she knows all about the suffering children sometimes endure.

But that didn't protect her from the sense of outrage and hurt when she visited a school in the Israeli-controlled West Bank.

She appeared emotional in a video she posted during a recent trip to Palestine. There, she represented the House of Commons' International Development Select Committee, which scrutinises the Foreign Office's work.

Mrs Champion, elected the first female MP for Rotherham back in 2012, filmed a blog detailing how she had undertaken a "challenging" visit to a school setting in East Jerusalem.

"I met a lot of the children there which was just lovely," she said.

"While I was there the teachers took me to one side and showed me a tear gas canister that had been shot into the school the day before."

The staff explained how soldiers had been guarding engineers working on a pylon supplying energy to what she termed illegal Israeli occupiers in the area.

"To protect the settlers, the Israel Defence Force always have security there… right next to the boys' school.

"The engineers started to do the work with the soldiers standing by, at the exact moment the boys were being let out of school.

"And boys being boys, and the oldest ones were 13, were quite mouthy to some of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers, who rather than thinking, at best, these were 13-year-old boys being let out of school and just tell them to go on their way they decided to fire tear gas."

The MP said she'd tried to understand how the military might have felt intimidated by children, saying that tensions are often high there.

But she couldn't fathom why the incapacitating weapons were fired into the girls' school on the other side of the road from the boy's school.

"What I can't understand is why you would fire a tear gas cannister the opposite side of the road into the school with six year olds and girls."

She said the school building was clearly identified with a UN flag flying on it.

"The IDF have all the coordinates of all the schools and medical centres."

Mrs Champion (55) was close to welling up in the video as she recalled talking to the girl students about the incident.

"To say it was sad doesn't really sum it up," she said.

"I met the girls, a class of 20-25, they were (aged) about 8-10 these girls, and I asked them if they had any questions?

The first one was: "Do children in the UK feel safe?"

She replied that, generally, they do.

"I asked if they felt safe, and every one of those girls shook their head.

"They told me how the tear gas makes their eyes stream, and some of them said they were sick, made them feel ill.

"I said how did you know it was tear gas? They said they could tell by the sound and the smell.

"The West Bank isn't a war zone it is an occupied territory, and yet six-year-old children know what tear gas is and have to experience that on a daily basis. Now that is not right at all.

"Surely we can stand up against Israel tear-gassing six-year-old children?

"I will be raising this with our Government – children should never be able to recognise the sound and smell of tear gas."