A senior UK government minister has condemned Israeli attacks against Palestinians that “cannot be justified as self-defence”, warning: “It has got to stop.”
Speaking a week after Israel shattered a two-month ceasefire in Gaza with some of its deadliest strikes since the early months of the war, the UK health secretary Wes Streeting said he found Israel’s decision to do so “soul-destroying”.
Gaza health authorities say nearly 700 people – mostly women and children – have been killed in the past week, with the reported Palestinian death toll now surpassing 50,000 since the war was sparked by Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023.
Insisting that the Labour government has used “every diplomatic lever available” to them since assuming power in July to try to bring an end to the “bloody war”, Mr Streeting told a Guardian Live event on Tuesday night that he still feels “powerless”.
“I find it soul-destroying seeing the breakdown of the ceasefire and the impact we are seeing on innocent human lives,” he was reported as saying.
Mr Streeting continued: “I was looking back at some photos just this morning of a place called Susya in the West Bank, which has been under threat of demolition by the Israelis for many years and now is on the frontline of settler violence.
“This is completely unjustifiable. It is completely intolerable. It doesn’t serve in Israel’s self interest. It cannot be justified as self-defence, and it has got to stop.”
He added: “It’s very frustrating, let me tell you, being a member of the cabinet the United Kingdom and still feeling powerless in the face of this appalling conflict which does nothing for Israelis or Palestinians.”
Announcing the resumption of Israeli military action on 18 March, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the deadly strikes reported to have killed more than 400 Palestinians that day were “only the beginning”.
Following the breakdown of the ceasefire, Britain’s foreign secretary David Lammy warned that the decision had resulted in an “appalling loss of life” and possibly “the deadliest single day for Palestinians since the war began”.
And Mr Lammy warned that it was “difficult to see” how Israel’s denial of humanitarian assistance to Gaza civilians “can be compatible with international humanitarian law” – but stopped short of repeating his previous remarks that there had been a “breach of international law”.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251 in a cross-border attack on 7 October 2023.
