Rishi Sunak said on Tuesday that Britain was working with allies at the UN Security Council to forge a "sustainable ceasefire" in Gaza, as MPs heard harrowing evidence of civilian suffering in the ruined Palestinian territory.
The Prime Minister told senior MPs that "active dialogue" at United Nations headquarters in New York was ongoing ahead of a vote on a new ceasefire resolution, with Arab countries hoping the US administration does not repeat its veto of a prior motion.
"We've been consistent in calling for sustained humanitarian pauses, or indeed a sustainable ceasefire," Mr Sunak said to members of the Commons Liaison Committee.
"We are having that conversation with other colleagues around the world... no one wants this conflict to go on for a moment longer than is necessary," he said, stressing that "too many" Palestinian lives have been lost.
But the PM stressed that a ceasefire was only possible if Hamas releases hostages seized during its killing spree of October 7, and stops firing rockets into Israel.
A Tory MP who has broken ranks with the Government over Gaza said an immediate ceasefire was needed because many Palestinians are on the brink of starvation.
Flick Drummond is one of 10 Conservative MPs who have written to Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron demanding that Britain push Israel to call off its offensive now. The other signatories included former cabinet members George Eustice, Kit Malthouse and David Jones.
Speaking on Times Radio, Ms Drummond defended Israel’s defend to itself after the October attacks by Hamas.
“But they needed to have done it very quickly and surgically, and now we're finding huge numbers of innocent people, many of them children, who are suffering and their suffering continues now because they're at the point of starvation, too,” she said.
The MP noted that out of a pre-war population of 2.3 million in Gaza, 1.4 million people were now sheltering in UN shelters. “So the kettling of this (population) has just got unbelievable,” she said.
Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has relatives among a group of Christians who have sought shelter in a church compound in Gaza City. She told MPs that those trapped were down to their “last can of corn” and lived in terror at the prospect of being shot by Israeli snipers.
She urged the UK Government to support an “immediate bilateral ceasefire” as the violence was “making peace harder, not easier”.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem over the weekend said two Christian women in the Holy Family Church had been killed by an Israeli sniper “in cold blood”, in an incident condemned by Pope Francis. Israel has denied the allegation.
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said he was “particularly disturbed” by Ms Moran's account and the "desperate situation" in Gaza overall.
"It cannot continue and we are deploying all our diplomatic resources including in the United Nations to help find a viable solution,” he told the Commons.
“Although Israel has the right to defend itself against terror, restore its security and bring the hostages home, it must abide by international lawand take all possible measures to protect civilians.”
Juliette Touma, director of communications at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said Israel had used access to aid in Gaza as a “weapon of war”.
Commenting on footage of Palestinian civilians commandeering UN aid trucks, she said: “Yes, we have seen those videos, really horrible, of people who, like you rightly said, are just desperate, hungry, frustrated after 70 days of total siege and a brutal war.
“And aid, by the way, should not be contested. Aid is something, in any conflict, that should be very, very straightforward,” Ms Touma added on Times Radio.
“And we haven't had this (in Gaza). We had instead a very, very tight siege, with serious restrictions on bringing what is very basic for human beings, like food, like water, like fuel…And this is unacceptable.”
In their letter, the 10 Tories said they were “dismayed” that the UK last week had abstained on another UN resolution calling for a ceasefire.
They said that Israel’s actions were “neither proportionate nor targeted” and warned that the “brutalization of the civilian Palestinian population is sure to lead to more extremism in the future”.
Other Conservatives have also been speaking out.
Writing in the Telegraph, former defence secretary Ben Wallace warned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “killing rage” in response to the Hamas attack was radicalising Muslim youth worldwide.
Alicia Kearns, Tory chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said she believed Israel had broken international humanitarian law and lost its moral authority.
Israel insists it does all it can to prevent excess casualties in Gaza but that Hamas embeds its fighters among civilians. The terror group, which is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, has also said it would repeat the October carnage given the opportunity, and continues to hold 129 hostages.
Lord Cameron on Tuesday started a diplomatic tour including visits to Paris, Rome and the Middle East, lobbying for unity in the European approach to the Israel-Hamas war as well as to Ukraine and illegal migration.
“The Foreign Secretary will discuss the situation in Gaza with regional leaders this week in his visit to Egypt and Jordan," Mr Mitchell said.
