 Seeking to gain more exposure to foreign affairs, he joined several Labour Party MPs on a fact-finding trip to the Middle East in April 1982.The group met with King Hussein of Jordan and Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon; in Israel they were briefly caught in the middle of a shooting incident between Israeli troops and a Palestinian rock-thrower.Major's first promotion came when he was appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in January 1981 to Patrick Mayhew and Timothy Raison, both Ministers of State at the Home Office.