Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans was one of a five strong delegation from the European Parliament sent to report on the humanitarian situation in Gaza following the twenty two days of Israeli bombing.

I expected the worst but the reality was still shocking.

In parts of Gaza City whole streets had been reduced to rubble and the survivors lived in tents on the sites of their former homes.

Many had been killed, including babies and children. In the Al Hajaj house in Zeitoun I listened to the most distressing story from a young man whose father and sister had been killed before his eyes when a bomb came through the roof.

He tried to get help but because it was a combat zone he was not allowed to leave and there were no ambulances. The bodies were left there for fifteen days.

In a rural area outside Gaza City we met a father of young children whose wife and mother in law had been shot by soldiers.

Their house was being shelled by tanks and they left waving a white cloth to get to safety but they were fired on.

They fell on the road and bled to death. Their relatives were unable to reach them. The house was then used by the soldiers who left terrifying warnings scrawled on the walls for others to see.

This was the reality of what was happening behind the press blackouts in Gaza. This was how thirteen hundred people died. Their terror and pain is unimaginable.

Now they have to try and rebuild their lives. But even if the bombing is over the siege is not.

Gaza is closed to the outside world and the Israelis allow only fifteen items to cross the checkpoints – mostly food and medicines. Anything they think might be used to attack them is banned, including paper, glass and cement. You can’t rebuild a society without the tools.

The same applies to the economy of Gaza. The Israeli bombers had targetted factories, government buildings and schools. In Izbet Abd Rabo we saw the wreckage of an ice cream factory that had employed over two hundred people.

Every refrigerated van had been burnt. Over six hundred businesses were damaged including Gaza’s biggest wheat flour mill.

Over 90% of the people are totally dependent on United Nations food aid. Hundreds queue up every day at food distribution centres to collect their parcels of flour, sugar, oil, milk and luncheon meat.

No roof was left above the Disney painted walls of the children’s ward of the Al Quds Hospital, now deserted. When the hospital was bombed by an F16 the staff had to literally carry the forty five patients down the street to safety. Sixteen of their ambulances had been destroyed.

But there was still optimism. Outside the wreckage of the American International School, the headteacher told us that they had rented premises so they could carry on teaching the two hundred Palestinian students.

Over half of the population of Gaza is under 25 years of age, and driving through the streets there seemed to be young people everywhere. This is because so many schools have been bombed that the children go to school in shifts in the ones that are left.

The politicians we met from all Palestinian parties were committed to forming a “unity” government to work for peace and justice.

When such a government was formed two years ago, the European Union refused to work with it, despite having called for it.

This time we have to recognise the government and help ensure that the international community – most importantly the United States – does so too.

That is the message we reported back to the European Parliament. We have to play our part in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and see the two states living peacefully side by side.

The bombs that fell on the Al Quds Hospital also badly damaged the cultural centre next door.

Artists have started to return and display new, colourful paintings on the charred and blackened walls. They hang there as a reminder that no war can kill the hope and spirit of the people of Palestine.

Jill Evans represents the whole of Wales in the European Parliament.