SNP MPs have locked horns with party high command amid fury over a minister meeting with a senior Israeli diplomat.
Brendan O’Hara (below), the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson in Westminster, is understood to have written to Angus Robertson expressing his anger after the External Affairs Secretary met with Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK last week.
An SNP insider told The National: “Brendan wrote a letter to Robertson expressing his anger and frustration at the meeting, making it clear it didn't represent the [Westminster] group or the party.”
It is a show of defiance from the Westminster group amid mounting internal criticism of Robertson for meeting with Daniela Grudsky Ekstein in secret last week.
Details of the meeting were kept under wraps for four days until it was revealed by the Scottish Government the pair had discussed “areas of mutual interest” between the two countries.
Robertson was also said by the Scottish Government to have rehearsed the SNP’s calls for a ceasefire in the region.
First Minister John Swinney (above) earlier this week defended the clandestine meeting, saying it was an “opportunity to convey our consistent position on the killing and suffering of innocent civilians in the region”.
But SNP MPs are said to be furious about the meeting. It could serve to undermine the work the group did before the election in championing the case for a ceasefire before the other two big Westminster parties.
The SNP have faced harsh criticism for the meeting, which The National understands was kept secret for a period at the request of the Israeli embassy owing to “security” concerns.
Many within the party, including MSPs and senior councillors have expressed their disappointment the rendezvous went ahead.
Kirsty Hughes, the founder and former director of the Scottish Centre on European Relations, strongly criticised the meeting, calling it "indefensible".
"What we see in this disastrous meeting is effectively a trashing of the moral high ground that the Scottish Government had occupied on Gaza," Hughes wrote on her Substack blog.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Greens have claimed it shows the SNP’s “hypocrisy” on the Gaza issue.
On Thursday, party co-leader Patrick Harvie (above) and MSP Ross Greer wrote to the First Minister accusing him of “inaction” to prevent companies complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank from benefiting from public funds and support from the Scottish Government.
The Scottish Government has said it would not be possible to do so and the Israeli embassy has criticised the Greens, saying it was “unfortunate that the core principles of diplomacy are being called into question”.
