UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron is to tell the Israeli cabinet minister Benny Gantz at a meeting in London that UK patience is wearing thin at the lack of humanitarian aid reaching the people of Gaza,
The Guardian reports.
The foreign secretary, on the eve of Wednesday’s visit, issued the warning to peers in a late-night debate, adding that Israel as the occupying power in Gaza had a duty under international humanitarian law to provide aid. He said the situation was dreadful and people were starving to death.
Gantz’s visit to Washington and London has infuriated his political rival the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he was not consulted about it. The trip to London after a two-day visit to Washington was not organised by the Israeli embassy or the ministry of foreign affairs.
The visit has been taken as a sign of the exasperation of Joe Biden and the British administration with Netanyahu, both over his unwillingness to allow more aid into Gaza, and his refusal to back western plans for the future administration of Gaza if an extended ceasefire is agreed.
A Channel 13 poll this week showed that Gantz, a former defence minister and chair of Israel’s National Unity party, is likely to win 39 seats in an election, with Netanyahu securing 17.
In a sign of the US exasperation with the Israeli leader, Gantz was given the red-carpet treatment, granted meetings with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Speaking at the end of a seven-hour foreign affairs debate, Cameron said: “We are facing a situation of dreadful suffering in Gaza. I spoke some weeks ago about the danger of this tipping into famine, and the danger of illness tipping into disease. And we are now at that point, people are dying of hunger, people are dying of otherwise preventable diseases.”
He added: “We’ve had a whole set of things we’ve asked the Israelis to do, but I have to report that the amount of aid they got in in February was about half what got in in January. So patience needs to run very thin, and a whole series of warnings need to be given starting with the meeting I have with Minister Gantz when he visits the UK tomorrow.”
He set out the series of requests the UK government had already put to the Israelis, including expanding the type of humanitarian assistance that gets in. He said: “Too many items are sent away because they’re supposedly dual use goods. Some of these things are absolutely necessary for medical and other procedures. And we also need to see a resumption of electricity and water to north and south Gaza.”
The foreign secretary also sent an unusually direct warning about Israel’s potential breach of the rules of war. He said: “Israel is the occupying power, it is responsible. And that has consequences, including in how we look at whether Israel is compliant with international humanitarian law.”
If Foreign Office legal advice were published showing Israel in breach of the law, the UK would be required to end arms exports licences to Israel.
The foreign secretary also set out his support for a shorter ceasefire leading seamlessly to an extended end to the fighting, a plan that was also pressed upon Gantz by the US.
But in remarks more favourable to Israel, Cameron again said: “As part of a long-term ceasefire you have got to get the Hamas leadership out of Gaza. You’ve got to get rid of the terrorist infrastructure”.
Gantz reportedly said in the US that Israel would be forced to enter Rafah in order to topple Hamas. “Ending the war without acting in Rafah is like sending firefighters to extinguish only 80% of the fire,” he reportedly told US officials.
Cameron and Gantz will exchange views on whether a temporary ceasefire deal is still possible after talks between Hamas and Israel in Egypt appeared to have stalled before Ramadan next week, which has been seen as a deadline.
