I escaped Iranian missiles and all the British government could do was give me a digestive biscuit

We’d spent the night in and out of the shelter. By 12:30am, deep underground, I found a patch of signal and opened X, hoping for updates on the strikes. Instead, balloons floated up my screen: it was my birthday. I’d forgotten.

The Ayatollah’s gift was a wave of ballistic missiles whistling overhead. But I was nearly out. That morning, after yet another dash to the shelter, I would be leaving Israel.

I was travelling with a delegation from South America, originally in the country for LGBTQ+ advocacy and Pride. The parade had been cancelled that Friday morning, after a night of sirens. I’d come to Israel to cover the party for this newspaper. But the stage was never used and the portaloos never needed. Rainbow flags still fluttered across Tel Aviv.

At dawn on Tuesday, a blacked-out minivan arrived to take a small group of us to the Jordanian border. The Israeli Foreign Ministry had arranged our exit. The British government, by contrast, had been absent. They didn’t even begin compiling a list of Brits in Israel until four days after the missiles started falling.

As we drove out of Tel Aviv, the aftermath of the strikes came into view. The house I’d been staying in had been damaged two nights before. A few days earlier, a missile had struck another part of town nearby. It felt like the bombs were narrowing in on me. 

The journey to the Allenby Bridge crossing took about two hours, winding past agricultural fields and West Bank dwellings, as well as blown-out shells of apartment buildings. As we approached the border, our phones began pinging again – new siren alerts for Tel Aviv.

“Looks like we got out just in time,” said one man on the bus. 

But as we entered the bright-white airport-style border facility, fresh booms echoed in the distance. They were falling closer than Tel Aviv.

In previous nights, I’d seen several explosions and missiles overhead, as Iranian rockets were intercepted mid-air by Israeli and American defence systems. At the border, it was harder to tell: were the explosions the sound of interception or impact?

The strikes delayed our crossing and we waited out in the open. Our Israeli escort from the Foreign Ministry looked concerned. No Israeli flags flew here – this was the West Bank. But the missiles were landing here too.

When the bombardment stopped, we passed through security. I was asked to remove my earrings and rings – unusual, even for Israeli security. I nudged a fellow Brit to take off his “Bring Them Home” hostage pin. Not the best accessory for Jordan.

When we cleared passport control, a coach waited to take us across the moonlike landscape between borders.

The bus was full. No Israelis, just foreign nationals. A group of Australians, travelling on diplomatic passports, were evacuating too.

After a short drive to the Jordanian side, an official climbed aboard, collected all of our passports, and locked us in the vehicle. We waited – twenty minutes? An hour? I couldn’t tell.

Eventually, I was given a cue to head into the Jordanian border post, where my passport was being handed around behind small holes drilled into the concrete.

At the back of the room, I saw two blonde women wearing high vis jackets emblazoned with Union Jack flags.

I walked to them, “are you from the embassy,” I asked.

“Yes. Are you British?”

They were from the UK embassy in Amman, sent to greet Brits crossing at Allenby. One of the women was a police officer and another worked in policy. They handed me a packet of digestive biscuits.

I was incredulous. The UK government had done nothing to help us get to the border – but once we’d crossed under our own steam, there were biscuits.

Biscuits from the British Embassy in Jordan (Photo: J Prinsley)[Missing Credit]

The Jordanian border closes in the afternoon. The process can take so long that people halfway through when the post closes can be sent back to Israel.

It took another hour or so to process us. There was some kind of system, even if it didn’t feel that way. My passport was returned, along with visa slips – temporary documents, in place of stamps, since I wasn't staying in Jordan.

Outside, I took a taxi to Amman airport with another Brit. Along the road, shops sold inflatable toys for the Dead Sea.

At the airport, greeted by photos of the Jordanian royal family, we showed our visa slips to officials and checked in to our flight. They didn’t ask where we came from. I’d hidden my remaining shekels in my dirty laundry after seeing advice telling Israelis not to pass through the country.

In the departure lounge, I scanned the room for anyone else who might have taken our route. It was hard to tell – most, like me, had probably stripped off anything visibly Jewish.

Then our phones buzzed: new alerts from the Home Front Command. We hadn’t yet deleted the app, and the pinging was a tell-tale giveaway. More missiles were incoming and the atmosphere in the hall shifted. Faces whitened. If the rockets flew near the flight path, we weren’t going anywhere.

But we boarded. Somehow, we took off.

I tracked our progress on the in-flight map. We skirted Israel and Gaza – and flew right where Iranian missiles might be headed. I hoped we were cruising above their reach.

The Royal Jordanian Airlines map did not acknowledge Israel. Gaza, though, was clearly labelled – its name prominently displayed even at zoomed-out scale.

Applause broke out across the cabin when we landed in Istanbul late at night. We’d made it.

After a few hours' sleep at a nearby hotel, we were up again at 4:20am to return to the airport. A man offered to share his cab between the airport hotel and the terminal. On the drive, he described how Turkey was taking in people fleeing war in Iran. My fellow Brit and I looked at each other but said nothing; we didn’t tell him where we’d just come from.

When the flight finally touched down at Heathrow on Wednesday morning, there was no applause. Life in London is the same as always; the missiles are behind me.

But many others remain in limbo – plotting escape routes through Jordan and Egypt. Few, if any, have received support from the British government, despite the embassy evacuating families of Foreign Office officials.

In that moment, as the missiles rained down around me and the windows blew in, I didn’t need a packet of digestives from the British consulate once I’d finally crossed the border. I needed help with an exit route. But the Foreign Office would not help with that. Instead, they sent poorly worded, confusing emails and ignored pleas for help from UK citizens. It’s one thing to be caught in the path of a foreign regime’s missiles. It’s another to feel like no one at home is watching.