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Staring out over the Jordanian hills towards Palestine, Yvette Cooper was deeply frustrated. Warehouses stuffed full of life-saving aid stand less than 40 miles from the border with the West Bank, and beyond it, the road that leads to Gaza . But despite the ceasefire deal, Israeli restrictions mean that thousands of tonnes of food, tents, and other vital kit are sitting in depots, rather than being piled into lorries to help desperate Gazans. To the west of Amman, Jordan's capital, is the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge - a key border crossing into the West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories. But it has been shut to aid lorries since September after two Israeli soldiers were killed near the crossing. I have spent the last four days travelling through the Middle East with the Foreign Secretary, at a pivotal moment for the peace process after two years of deadly conflict. When you travel with Britain’s top diplomat, you are embedded into the delegation, a massive entourage of officials, security and advisers. Riding at the back of the Foreign Secretary’s convoy, my life flashed before my eyes more than once as we forced our way through the traffic at breakneck speed. The trip began in Bahrain, an island state on the Persian Gulf, where Ms Cooper attended a security summit and held talks with power players from across the Middle East. She then travelled to Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, another influential force in the region, for more crucial meetings. But despite the glitz of the oil-rich Gulf, the desperate situation in Gaza was top of the agenda. How to turn a fragile ceasefire into a lasting peace and the restrictions on aid getting into the war-ravaged enclave were weighing heavily on the Foreign Secretary's mind. On Monday, we travelled to Amman, the capital of Jordan, which shares a border with the West Bank, policed by Israel. Ms Cooper seemed frustrated and then angry as she took in the sight of 4,000 metric tonnes of food piled up in a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse, to the south of Amman. Volunteers at the depot said some of the pallets, containing necessities like wheat flour, tinned goods, yeast and sugar, had been sitting there for up to nine months. Meanwhile, people in Gaza are in the grip of a man-made famine. On our final morning, the Foreign Secretary travelled to look out over the Jordanian hills and the road to Palestine. She told me: “It's clear when you're here that we are less than 100 miles from Gaza, and that's why this has long been the route to get aid into Gaza... And yet, it's not happening. "We saw from the warehouse - 700,000 people could be fed for a month on the wheat in that one warehouse alone, and there were 30 other warehouses, similarly full of things that need to go into Gaza. "It just made so powerfully clear why it is that the Jordanian aid route into Gaza has to be reopened, and it has to be reopened urgently. There's huge amounts of aid that could be supporting desperate families in Gaza. "The food, the shelter kits, the tents, the winter clothing, the food that can deal with the hunger and malnutrition, medical supplies, crucially important medical supplies that need to get in. "When you feel the sense of how close it is and yet how far we have been from being able to get the aid to those who need it. So I think it's absolutely essential that the Jordanian route is opened as rapidly as possible." Ms Cooper also revealed that she will be pushing hard to help the Jordanians get permission to set up a maternity field hospital in Gaza, which is ready to go if the Israeli Government gives it the green light. Around 15 women a week are currently being forced to give birth outside of hospital in the strip due to the decimated healthcare system. Meeting brave youngsters who have been medically evacuated from Gaza at the Specialty Hospital in Amman on Monday strengthened Ms Cooper's resolve to help rebuild healthcare, and to get international doctors in. The Foreign Secretary is ramping up pressure on Israel to lift its restrictions and open the border crossings, as agreed in the peace plan brokered by Donald Trump last month. While there are many obstacles to a lasting peace, she said many things could be done immediately like getting aid out of warehouses and into Gaza, setting up the maternity field hospital and getting school supplies to kids. Reflecting on her visit, she said: "What it's demonstrated is both the real urgency and also how much more can be done very quickly, if only we lift the restrictions and work together to make it happen. "There are some things we know will take a long time. There will be a lot of long-term reconstruction, things that we know that will take time. But what is so striking here in Jordan is the things we could do really quickly. We could really quickly get the maternity field hospital into Gaza. "We could really quickly get the aid out of those warehouses onto trucks and across into Gaza. There's already systems in place to get schools up and running." She added: "There's a real urgency about this. People shouldn't think it's just about a long term plan. There is immediate and urgent action that we could take now."
