Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said on Thursday it was imperative for Israel to allow more aid into Gaza to reach Palestinian civilians threatened by hunger and disease.
Britain is working at the United Nations Security Council to build support for a new ceasefire resolution, he stressed during a visit to Cairo following a trip to Jordan where he saw aid trucks being loaded up.
He said that people working for the UK Government in Gaza have managed to get out but have left relatives trapped behind, “who are going hungry, who are not able to eat, who are threatened with disease”.
“And it is a huge threat facing Gaza at the moment and aid is the absolute priority,” Lord Cameron told a joint news conference with Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry.
Britain is “pushing very hard” for Israel to fully open up the Kerem Shalom freight crossing into Gaza, and is also looking at the prospect of sending UK aid ships direct from Cyprus, the former PM said.
“Everything that can be done must be done to get aid into Gaza to help people in the desperate situation that they're in,” he said.
The draft UN Security Council resolution was “really all about aid, the delivery of aid and the need to upscale the aid and the need for it to get through in far bigger numbers”, Lord Cameron added.
“Talks continue and Britain will do what it can to try and build that consensus in New York at the Security Council.”
The minister added that he and Mr Shoukry discussed threats from Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels to Red Sea shipping, which have forced several companies to divert their vessels.
The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Diamond has joined a US-led maritime task force to patrol the Red Sea after an oil tanker was attacked by a drone and missile.
“It's absolutely essential that those maritime corridors, the free movement of ships, of goods, manufacturers, of oil, of world trade, that they keep going,” Lord Cameron said.
His comments came after the United States expressed hope that a new ceasefire deal in Gaza allowing the release of more hostages held by Hamas could be in the offing.
The Hamas-run health ministry reported a death toll of more than 20,000 in Gaza from Israel's invasion as the Palestinian terror group’s leader Ismail Haniyeh visited Egypt, which is mediating in the crisis.
"These are very serious discussions and negotiations, and we hope that they lead somewhere," White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters, although Hamas officials have ruled out any truce unless Israel ends the invasion.
The UN Security Council has this week repeatedly delayed a vote on a ceasefire and sending desperately needed aid to Gaza, fearing a veto by Washington on behalf of its Israeli allies as negotiations intensify in the Middle East.
Sources said envoys were intensively discussing which of the hostages still held by Hamas and other Palestinian militants in Gaza could be freed, and which Palestinian prisoners might be released by Israel in return.
More than 100 hostages still remain out of some 240 who were abducted when Hamas fighters rampaged across southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people.
Israel’s resultant offensive has largely flattened cities in the coastal Gaza strip. The US and UK governments have been increasingly sounding the alarm about the civilian toll.
But Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that the war would end only with Hamas eradicated and all of the hostages freed.
"Whoever thinks we will stop is detached from reality,” he said on Wednesday. “All Hamas terrorists, from the first to the last, are dead men walking."
