Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron met with Israeli minister Benny Gantz in central London on Wednesday to discuss the flow of aid into Gaza. Lord Cameron stressed that Israel, as the occupying power in Gaza, had a legal responsibility to ensure the availability of aid. International law states that an occupying power has a duty to ensure food and medical supplies reach the population under its control, “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”.
Lord Cameron warned that the situation in Gaza is at risk of tipping into famine and disease due to the current lack of aid. He stated that despite the UK pushing for more aid to reach Gaza, the amount that had reached the territory in February was just half that of the previous month. In a debate on foreign affairs in the House of Lords, Lord Cameron stated that Israel needed “a whole series of warnings” over the amount of aid reaching Gaza.
Mr Gantz, a retired general and member of Israel’s war cabinet, was visiting London after his trip to Washington despite the wishes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr Gantz is the moderate chairman of Israel’s National Unity Party and has proved a stiff political opponent to Mr Netanyahu, despite joining him as a member of his war cabinet after the attack by Hamas that triggered the recent conflict.
While in the United States, Vice-President Kamala Harris expressed “deep concern” over the situation in Gaza and urged Israel to allow more aid in, while calling on Hamas to accept terms for a ceasefire. On 7 October, Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza’s border into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 others as hostages. In response, Israel launched a campaign of air strikes and a ground invasion of the territory. More than 30,700 Palestinians have been killed, and tens of thousands injured by Israeli strikes since the start of the war, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry
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