Israeli military preparing ‘unrelenting attacks’ – as it happened
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, joined calls on Monday for a humanitarian pause in the conflict between Israel and Hamas to let more aid supplies into Gaza.
“Now the most important thing is for humanitarian support to go into Gaza,” Borrell told the media, Reuters reports, as he arrived for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg. Borrell said the ministers would discuss the call for a pause.
“Personally, I think a humanitarian pause is needed in order to allow humanitarian support to come in and be distributed,” Borrell said.
In the UK, the transport secretary has said now is not the right time to be discussing taking refugees from Gaza. Mark Harper told Sky News:
Reaching for the tool of refugees at this stage is not the right one to do. I think the most important thing is to support people in the region and that’s why we’ve been urging the Israeli government and the Egyptian government to make sure that aid can get into Gaza. We saw the first stages of that at the weekend, and that was very welcome.
Harper also addressed the issue of whether London’s police acted appropriately during pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the capital at the weekend. He said:
I saw those clips of [protesters chanting ‘jihad’] at the weekend. I along with many people would have been disturbed by it.
The home secretary will make it clear that the government thinks the full force of the law should be used. The police are operationally independent, which I think is appropriate, and they will have to explain the reasons for the decisions they have taken.
He was also critical of a video that emerged that appeared to show a driver on the London underground leading a chant of “free Palestine” over the train intercom, saying it was “disturbing”.
“I want to make sure people across the country are secure,” he said, “and those sorts of things will have been very concerning, particularly to people in the Jewish community.”
