UK says Rafah offensive ‘wrong’ without plans to ‘protect people’
The UK foreign secretary has said it would be wrong for Israel to carry out an offensive in Rafah without plans to protect people.
The UK foreign secretary has said it would be wrong for Israel to carry out an offensive in Rafah without plans to protect people.
Lord David Cameron told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News that the UK will not support an offensive ‘in that way’.
Lord Cameron added: ‘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.’
There are more than one million displaced people in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where people fled as Israeli forces made their way through the north.
More than 35,000 people have died in the Palestinian territory since Israel launched military operations in response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which killed more than 1,000 in Israel.
Lord Cameron also said he is ‘always pushing’ the Israelis on a hostage deal and achieving a pause in the fighting to seek a sustainable ceasefire – but said the 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.’
A ceasefire was on the table just days ago, and there was hope the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Israeli air strikes would focus Israel’s allies on demanding a deal.
As for negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be undermining his own negotiators as he seeks to appease far-right elements of his government calling for all-out war while public opinion demands a return of hostages.
There’s a game of brinkmanship going on, according to Professor Yossi Mekelberg, a fellow at Chatham House, a London-based international affairs think tank.
Mekelberg told Metro.co.uk: ‘For Netanyahu, the end of the war might also mean the end of his political career.’
Khaled Elgindy, an expert on Israel-Palestine affairs at the Middle East Institute, believes the goal is to depopulate Gaza in the next decade.
He told Metro.co.uk: ‘Gaza is not a place where humans can actually live anymore.
‘I think the goal of that is eventually for people to leave Gaza, if not in the midst of this war, then certainly afterwards.’
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