Lord Cameron warns Israel about all-out offensive in Gaza

David Cameron today warned Israel it would ‘wrong’ to launch an all-out offensive in Gaza ‘without a plan to protect people’. 

The Foreign Secretary dismissed calls for the UK to stop supplying Israel with weapons as he argued it would not be a ‘wise path’. 

Tensions over a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah led US President Joe Biden to warn Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he would pause more arms shipments if he launches a full-scale invasion. 

Lord Cameron says there needs to be a clear plan on how to save people’s lives in southern Gazan city, where around 1.4 million people have taken refuge from the fighting.

Israel says it must go into Rafah in order to complete the job of wiping out Hamas. 

David Cameron today warned Israel it would ‘wrong’ to launch an all-out offensive in Gaza ‘without a plan to protect people’

Lord Cameron says there needs to be a clear plan on how to save people’s lives in southern Gazan city, where around 1.4 million people have taken refuge from the fighting

Asked whether it would be wrong to begin an incursion, the Foreign Secretary told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News: ‘That’s right, without a plan to protect people.’

The Tory peer continued: ‘For there to be a major offensive in Rafah, there would have to be an absolutely clear plan about how you save lives, how you move people out the way, how you make sure they’re fed, you make sure that they have medicine and shelter and everything.

‘We have seen no such plan… so we don’t support an offensive in that way.’

Lord Cameron also said he was ‘always pushing’ the Israelis on a hostage deal and achieving a pause in the fighting to seek a sustainable ceasefire.

But the real pressure should be on Hamas, he added.

‘Hamas have been offered a deal which would release hundreds of prisoners from Israeli jails, that would provide a pause in the fighting to get desperately-needed aid into Gaza and they’re not taking that deal.’

An immediate embargo on UK arms supply to Israel would not be a ‘wise path’, Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron has argued.

Asked about US threats to withhold weapons, he said: ‘I think America and the UK are in a totally different situation.

‘The United States is a massive, bulk, state supplier of weapons to Israel, including 1,000lb bombs and all the rest of it.

Internally displaced Palestinians near the Egyptian border in Rafah prepare to leave with their belongings after an evacuation order issued by the Israeli army 

Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike near the separating wall between Egypt and Rafah 

A street in Rafah is nearly deserted, as Israel’s military expanded an evacuation order for eastern areas of the southern Gaza city

Internally displaced Palestinians arrive to Khan Younis after leaving Rafah following an evacuation order issued by the Israeli army

An elderly woman and child wait with belongings before evacuating from Rafah, following an order from the Israeli military

A makeshift tent camp in Rafah. The U.S. has promised to assist in erecting more

Displaced Palestinians arrive at a makeshift tent camp west of Rafah 

‘The UK provides less than 1 per cent of Israel’s weapons and it’s not a state supplier. We have a licensing system and those licences can be closed if it’s judged there’s a serious risk of a serious international human rights violation.’

The Tory peer said he was pushed to declare an immediate arms embargo a few months ago, ‘and the very next thing that happened just a few days later, was a massive Iranian attack on Israel’.

‘So I don’t think it would have been a wise path, and I still don’t think it would be a wise path,’ he said, adding it would ‘strengthen Hamas’.

Lord Cameron also said Israel must ‘do better on’ allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza.

‘I’ve said many times that I’m not content with the action Israel has taken over humanitarian aid,’ he said, adding there are ‘some signs’ of improvement, ‘but not fast enough’.