Foreign Secretary comments on the situation in Gaza
Our objective is to maintain a ceasefire allowing meaningful negotiations leading to a sustainable solution that will allow Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace and security
Speaking today, the Foreign Secretary said:
We have seen some progress over the last 24 hours. We have now got a ceasefire in place. We have got the Israeli Defence Force out of Gaza which means that there is a chance of that ceasefire holding and we have got talks about to start in Cairo so we are now seeing the first fruits of what has been an intensive period of behind-the-scenes diplomacy trying to achieve the ceasefire that the people of Gaza so desperately needed.
Our objectives are firstly to maintain a ceasefire and, secondly, to get meaningful negotiations underway leading and, thirdly, to a sustainable solution in the area that will allow the Palestinians and the Israelis to live in peace and security.
The situation in Gaza is intolerable. We do not yet have the full details of the recent attack near the UN school and if I jump to public conclusions about what has happened I will rightly be condemned for doing that. We must look at the evidence and all the parties must cooperate with the inquiries, the reviews that there will now be, seeking to establish exactly what happened around these terrible incidents and how they came about, whether proper rules of engagement, proper international laws have been followed or not.
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