Foreign Secretary David Lammy used the UK’s presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to highlight the plight of the British-born Israeli hostage held by Hamas, Emily Damari.
He told diplomats on Monday: “Hamas still cruelly holds on to the hostages, including British national Emily Damari, extending their families’ torment even further.”
There was “no excuse for Hamas’s hostage taking … they need to be set free,” he said.
Addressing the situation in Gaza, Lammy called it “devastating and frankly beyond comprehension”.
He continued: “400 days into this war, it is totally unacceptable that it’s harder than ever to get aid into Gaza. In October, just 37 humanitarian trucks entered the Strip each day. It’s the lowest average in the last year.”
The foreign secretary described conditions in northern Gaza, where recent Israeli operations against terrorist group Hamas have been taking place, as “a nightmare of disease, destruction and despair”.
Turning to the West Bank, the Lammy lamented the fact that “an environment of impunity exists for extremist settlers”.
The foreign secretary repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire, saying: “The longer fighting continues, the deeper the depths of pain, of anger, which corrode the bonds of common humanity on which a lasting peace must necessarily be built. When the opening comes, we must be ready to seize it.”
He went on: “We need detailed plans for turning an immediate ceasefire into a lasting solution”.
Lammy also offered some detail as to how he wanted a post-war Gaza to be governed: “A strengthened and reformed Palestinian Authority should be at the centre of Gaza’s future recovery, security and governance”, he said. “We’ve got to give the people of the West Bank and Gaza a political horizon, a credible, irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state.”
He concluded by stating that “ending the war, securing a lasting peace, with a two-state solution at its core” was what the region needed. “And this is what the world wants. And this is what we will keep striving to achieve.”
Earlier this month, Lammy wrote for the JC about the plight of his fellow Tottenham fan Damari and said that the government were doing all they could to help secure her release.