Pope Leo renews call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
Gazan officials reported 85 Palestinians were killed on Sunday while queuing for aid, with witnesses claiming Israeli soldiers and tanks fired on the crowds in northern Gaza.
This incident followed another on Saturday, where 32 Palestinians were reportedly killed by Israeli troops while waiting for food distributed by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Israel's military acknowledged shooting at a large gathering of Palestinians in northern Gaza, citing a threat, and expressed regret over an earlier attack on the Holy Family Catholic Church, which killed three.
The ongoing conflict, now in its 21st month, has led to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with over 58,800 Palestinians killed by Israel's military offensive since Hamas's October 7th attack.
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The Independent
7 minutes ago
- The Independent
Sir Sadiq Khan calls on ministers to immediately recognise Palestinian statehood
Sir Sadiq Khan has piled pressure on the Government over Israel as he called on ministers to 'immediately recognise Palestinian statehood'. The Mayor of London said that the UK 'must do far more to pressure the Israeli government to stop this horrific senseless killing', as aid groups have warned of starvation in the Gaza Strip. It comes as the Archbishop of York labelled the situation in Gaza a 'a stain on the conscience of the international community'. More than 100 organisations including Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children have put their names to an open letter in which they said they were watching their own colleagues, as well as the Palestinians they serve, 'waste away'. 'The government of Israel's restrictions, delays and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation and death,' the letter said. In a statement posted on X on Wednesday, Labour mayor Sir Sadiq said pointed to 'starving children searching hopelessly for food in the rubble' and 'family members being shot dead by Israeli soldiers as they search for aid'. 'The international community – including our own Government – must do far more to pressure the Israeli government to stop this horrific senseless killing and let vital life saving aid in,' he added. Sir Sadiq went on: 'The UK must immediately recognise Palestinian statehood. There can be no two state solution if there is no viable state left to call Palestine.' Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel said that the mayor should 'should spend less time trying to play on the world stage' and 'focus on fixing his own mess in the capital'. Meanwhile the current most senior bishop in the Church of England has branded the infliction of 'violence, starvation and dehumanisation' on the people of Gaza by the Israeli government 'depraved and unconscionable'. Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell welcomed the UK and other nations' recent condemnation of the Israeli and US-backed current aid delivery model, which has reportedly resulted in Israel Defence Forces troops firing on Palestinian civilians in search of food on multiple occasions, but insisted there is 'no time to wait' for further action to be taken to 'stop this ongoing assault on Gaza'. He said: 'With each passing day in Gaza, the violence, starvation and dehumanisation being inflicted on the civilian population by the government of Israel becomes more depraved and unconscionable. 'In the name of God, I cry out against this barbaric assault on human life and dignity. It is a stain on the conscience of the international community, and a flagrant breach of international humanitarian law.' He repeated his call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages and said he rejected 'any policy that would amount to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population from Gaza'. World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that people in Gaza are facing 'yet another killer on top of bombs and bullets: starvation'. On Tuesday, Wes Streeting called for recognition of Palestine 'while there's still a state of Palestine left to recognise'. Speaking in the House of Commons, the Health Secretary described Israel's attacks on healthcare workers as going 'well beyond legitimate self-defence'. He told MPs he hopes 'that the international community can come together, as the Foreign Secretary has been driving towards, to make sure that we see an end to this war, but also the recognition of the state of Palestine while there's still a state of Palestine left to recognise'. Foreign Secretary David Lammy has hinted that Israel could face further sanctions from the UK if it does not agree to a ceasefire. Asked by ITV's Good Morning Britain on Tuesday what more he planned to do if Israel did not agree to end the conflict, the Foreign Secretary replied: 'Well, we've announced a raft of sanctions over the last few months. 'There will be more, clearly, and we keep all of those options under consideration if we do not see a change in behaviour and the suffering that we are seeing come to an end.' Hamas-led militants abducted 251 people in the October 7 attack in 2023 that triggered the war and killed around 1,200 people. Fewer than half of the 50 hostages still in Gaza are believed to be alive.
Telegraph
8 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Lammy handing Hamas a get-out card is an utter disgrace
To listen to David Lammy being interviewed by the BBC, it is as though the Islamist death cult known as Hamas bears absolutely no responsibility for the ongoing tragedy in Gaza. In the parallel universe occupied by our Foreign Secretary, it is seemingly not Hamas that started the war in Gaza by carrying out the worst massacre in Israel's history or bears responsibility for failing to agree a lasting ceasefire. It is not the terrorists who are to be blamed for disrupting the aid supply lines that are essential to preventing a humanitarian disaster. Instead, Lammy believes that the enduring catastrophe that has engulfed Gaza since the October 7 attacks in 2023 is the fault of the Israeli government and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Commenting after the UK had joined 27 other countries, including Canada, France and Australia, in issuing a statement condemning Israel for depriving Palestinians in Gaza of their 'human dignity', Lammy's hyperbole knew no bounds as he declared he was 'sickened, appalled' by Israel's conduct and its 'grotesque' targeting of starving Palestinians. Lamenting the fact that the UK had neither the power nor influence to end the conflict, he warned he was prepared to impose further sanctions against Israel if hostilities did not end soon. Throughout this seemingly endless anti-Israel diatribe on the BBC, at no point did Lammy make any reference to Hamas, and the pernicious role the group has played in wilfully disrupting aid supplies to Palestinian civilians in Gaza. There was no condemnation of the campaign of tyranny Hamas continues to exercise over Gaza's civilian population, nor any mention of freezing the assets of the wealthy Hamas terrorist masterminds holed up in Qatar. This is despite mounting evidence that the Iranian-backed terrorist group is deliberately exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the enclave for its own propaganda purposes. Hamas has been accused of targeting Palestinian civilians trying to obtain food and medical supplies provided by the US-sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. This is an aid organisation set up as an alternative to the UN-sponsored UNWRA, whose humanitarian efforts have been compromised by their links to Hamas. Videos are circulating online showing Hamas terrorists rounding up recipients of US aid, with some of them being tortured and killed. Meanwhile Israeli officials have released evidence that suggests that, far from blocking supplies, Israel has allowed 950 trucks to cross into Gaza to deliver aid, and the reason it has not been distributed is because too many of the UN-sponsored aid agencies are too busy criticising the Israelis to bother collecting it. In an active war zone like Gaza it is difficult to verify these conflicting narratives. But, at the very least, it is incumbent on the UK and other Western governments to try to bring some semblance of balance and proportion to highly inflammatory allegations, such as the claim that Israel is deliberately causing mass starvation among Palestinian civilians. This is clearly beyond Lammy's diplomatic skill set, with the Foreign Secretary apparently more interested in virtue signalling to Labour's hard-Left anti-Israel lobby than making any coherent effort to address the broader, and more complex, challenges raised by the Gaza crisis. By doing so, he is essentially propagating the same twisted anti-Israel agenda promoted by supporters of Palestine Action, the direct action group that Lammy and his ministerial colleagues have just proscribed as a terrorist organisation. No wonder the Israelis have responded to the latest international condemnation of their actions by Lammy and Co as being 'disconnected from reality'. If Britain and its co-signatories are genuinely committed to an 'unconditional and permanent ceasefire' in Gaza, as the statement insists, then they should concentrate their efforts on forcing Hamas and its backers in Iran to acknowledge the inevitable, and accept that the terrorist organisation's continued presence in Gaza must end. One of the biggest obstacles to the Trump administration's attempts to broker a lasting ceasefire in Gaza has been Hamas's determination to maintain operations in Gaza, irrespective of the scale of the defeat they suffer at the hands of the Israelis. If Hamas emerges from the conflict with just a fraction of its pre-war terrorist infrastructure intact, it will hail the achievement as a major victory. Israel, like any other country that has suffered atrocities on the scale committed on October 7, insists there will be no peace in Gaza so long as Hamas remains an active presence in the enclave. Allowing Hamas to retain any vestige of influence in the territory would simply place the Israeli people at risk of suffering yet another cataclysmic terrorist attack, which is why Netanyahu is so insistent that there can be no peace in Gaza so long as Hamas remains. The key to implementing a lasting ceasefire in Gaza is not indulging in more, utterly pointless, anti-Israel Lammyesque stunts. It is forcing Hamas and its backers that its reign of terror in the enclave is well and truly over.
The National
32 minutes ago
- The National
Man-made famine in Gaza 'most severe' since Second World War
Speaking with System Update, Alex de Waal noted that whilst the man-made famine in Gaza is not the largest by numbers, it is more 'intense' than the starvation imposed on countries like Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen. His comments come after the UN reported that more than 1000 Gazans have been killed whilst trying to access emergency food via the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which opened in May. READ MORE: Labour are creating uncertainty and acting against democratic freedom De Waal, who has been working on mass starvation for over 40 years, said: 'What's really remarkable and unique about the what we're seeing in Gaza today, it's not the largest in terms of the numbers – those in Ethiopia and Sudan and indeed in Yemen have been larger – but it's the most intense, the most severe and the most sort of minutely engineered. 'There is no other case since World War Two that I can think of where you have a people being subjected to this degree of starvation, and literally just a few miles away, there are aid givers with the resources, with the expertise, with the plans, with everything worked out, which, at the flick of a switch, could actually deliver a very comprehensive package of aid. 'It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would be an infinitely lot better than the what the people of Gaza are facing today. I haven't seen that in my career.' READ MORE: 70-year-old woman arrested under terror law after Edinburgh Gaza march The mass starvation expert also pointed out the gendered language of 'man-made', noting that it is a 'deliberate' choice as we are 'yet to see a woman-made' famine. On Wednesday, former First Minister Humza Yousaf posted a clip on social media urging those in power to end the aid blockade as he and wife Nadia El-Nakla revealed that their family members in Gaza are starving. More than 100 aid organisations have also warned of 'mass starvation' in the enclave, where more than two million people face shortages of food and other essentials as the genocide continues.
