UK Foreign Minister David Lammy calls for immediate ceasefire in Middle East trip

The Labour party's language on the Israel-Gaza war has become stronger since it won recent elections

Britain's recently appointed Foreign Secretary David Lammy, pictured at a meeting in Beirut, Lebanon in January this year. Reuters

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sunday, his second international trip since Labour's resounding victory in elections this month.

Mr Lammy said the war in Gaza is “intolerable” and stressed in meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leadership that the UK government wants to assist with diplomatic efforts “securing a ceasefire deal and creating the space for a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution”.

Mr Lammy will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He will meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday.

During his visit, Mr Lammy will also meet families of hostages held in Gaza who have ties to the UK. He called for the release of all hostages and a dramatic increase in the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza. About 680 tonnes of British aid that is waiting to enter Gaza, the Foreign Office said.

Mr Lammy demanded that Israel halt settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and said that the Palestinian Authority needs to be “reformed and empowered”.

Both Mr Lammy’s Labour Party and the previous Conservative government initially avoided calling for an immediate ceasefire in the war, using phrases like “humanitarian pause.”

But the language has become stronger. Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Mr Netanyahu last week there was a “clear and urgent need for a ceasefire”.

Labour’s stance on the Gaza war cost it votes in this month’s UK election. Although the party won in a landslide, pro-Palestine independent candidates defeated Labour in several seats with large Muslim populations.

Mr Lammy's comments came the day after Israel said it had killed a Hamas military commander in a strike on Saturday in the crowded southern Gaza Strip that killed at least 90 people, according to local health officials.

Palestinians salvage items from the site of Israeli bombardment at the al-Mawasi camp. AFP

Senior Hamas officials said on Sunday that the negotiations for a possible ceasefire deal had not been halted because of the attack. Hamas also denied that military chief Mohammed Deif, the target of the strike, was killed and said Israel’s “false claims are merely a cover-up for the scale of the horrific massacre.”

Mr Deif and Hamas' senior official in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, are believed by Israel to be the chief architects of the October 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped 250, triggering the Israel-Gaza war.

Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,400 people in Gaza and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory's Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.