A British woman stranded in Israel has criticised the Foreign Office’s “shocking” response to the evacuation of Britons. Gabriella Somerville, 58, an aviation specialist from Kensington, West London, described the Government strategy as being “put together on the back of a cigarette packet in a bar in Parliament”.
She said she registered for the Government’s repatriation flight and paid the money, but has since heard nothing. It comes after the first British evacuation flight left Israel earlier on Monday.
Ms Somerville, who visited Jerusalem for an aviation conference, said: “We’ve been here 10 days now and most other countries have had secure coaches to get to the border with Egypt or Oman or Jordan. Yet we were told by the Foreign Office to make our own way to the borders.
“There’s been little action to help the British community here. Repatriation should include transport by air, land and sea. We’ve only had land so far. We’re getting air now, but I think the best way is to go by sea. That would be the best way for people to get to Larnaca in Cyprus.
“I really feel for the people out here now. It’s really difficult, we’ve been going down to shelters for 10 days and we’re living out of packed suitcases but with no communication. We know that communication is one of the key things and we’re still here and people have been in tears, and it’s absolutely shocking. There’s no reassurance.
“Even an update saying they are working on it would be really helpful. There is no thinking about this whatsoever. A lady I spoke to was in tears because it’s the feeling that you’re out of control – and most of us aren’t sleeping because of the shelters.”
Ms Somerville added: “Repatriation needs to be outsourced to a private company. It has been proven that the Government does not know what to do and they have shown they are not worthy of looking after British nationals.”
Other Britons have had to make their own way back. Retired accountant James Eden, 72, from Newcastle, planned to spend a week on holiday in the Middle East, visiting sites on a Christian trail such as Bethlehem and Jericho, but was stranded in Jerusalem.
He spent more than £1,000 to cross the border into Egypt and fly from Sharm El-Sheikh, and said: “I arrived at my mother’s home in Portsmouth in the early hours of Sunday morning and I’m pretty exhausted. I was in Jerusalem with a friend of mine and I went down to the city of Eilat in the south of Israel on a bus.
“We got a taxi to the border and we crossed into Egypt, and at that point we met everybody else that was doing the same thing from Israel. There were thousands of people, a range from all different nationalities.
“From what we picked up from talking to people, most countries had chartered coaches to take people down from the border to Sharm El-Sheikh and that was as early as June 17. The main reason we didn’t stay put like the embassy suggested was because our family was very concerned. I felt quite safe but we did have to go down to a shelter in the middle of the night
“That’s no fun twice a night every night to avoid the missiles – it does play havoc with your mental state of mind. It’s debilitating.” Zak Wagman, a 26-year-old Conservative councillor from Stanmore, London, also made his own way out of the country, after visiting for a wedding.
He said: “We made our way back off our own backs, we went to the border crossing with Jordan and took a flight from Jordan to Heathrow via Qatar. We wanted to go because we could have been sitting around for quite a lot longer waiting for Government support.
“They absolutely could have done a lot more, you look at so many of our western allies, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, who all had strategies much earlier than us. It was reinforced at the border, which was safe but hectic, there were a large number of French officials and Indian officials, but none for the Brits – it was every man for themselves.
“The British evacuation flights are far too little, too late. It’s incredibly frustrating, it’s fear-inducing, these people are stuck under rocket fire, going to the shelters every night and the British Government has a duty to repatriate its citizens.”
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