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The UK has pledged an additional ￡8.5 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza, announced after Israel unveiled plans to expand its military operations.
Development minister Baroness Jenny Chapman said the money would "help address urgent need" in Gaza, but only if Israel allowed the region to be "flooded with aid".
She added: "It is unacceptable that so much aid is waiting at the border – the UK is ready to provide more through our partners, and we demand that the government of Israel allows more aid in safely and securely."
"The insufficient amount of supplies getting through is causing appalling and chaotic scenes as desperate civilians try to access tiny amounts of aid," she said.
The funding, delivered through the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), is part of a ￡101 million UK commitment to the Occupied Palestinian Territories this year.
OCHA has warned of widespread hunger among Gaza’s 2.1 million people, along with difficulties accessing water amid a severe heatwave and “significant impediments and other delays” to UN efforts to provide aid.
Palestinians struggle to collect humanitarian aid airdropped by parachutes into Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip(Associated Press)
The UK’s announcement comes after Foreign Secretary David Lammy joined his counterparts from Australia, Italy, Germany and New Zealand to condemn Israeli plans to escalate the conflict by taking over Gaza City.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that Israel would seek “the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip”, as well as “Israeli security control in the Gaza Strip” and “the establishment of an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority”.
In their joint statement, the foreign ministers said the plans “risk violating international law” and “any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law.”
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They added: “We are united in our commitment to the implementation of a negotiated two-state solution as the only way to guarantee that both Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace, security, and dignity.
“A political resolution based on a negotiated two-state solution requires the total demilitarisation of Hamas and its complete exclusion from any form of governance in the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian Authority must have a central role.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer described Israel’s plans as “wrong” and called for “a ceasefire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of all hostages by Hamas and a negotiated solution”.
A UN Security Council meeting to discuss Israel’s plan had been due to take place on Saturday, but has been rescheduled to Sunday at about 3pm UK time.