Israel’s actions in Gaza go ‘beyond self-defense,’ says British politician

Israel has “gone beyond self-defense” and lost moral authority in its war with Hamas, Alicia Kearns said. (Reuters)

• Alicia Kearns also said Israel had lost its moral authority and global standing in its war against Hamas

LONDON: Israeli military action in Gaza has “gone beyond self-defense,” a British Conservative Party politician said on Monday.

Speaking to the BBC, Alicia Kearns also said Israel had lost its moral authority and global standing in its war against Hamas, adding she believed its actions in Gaza had broken international law.

“Bombs don’t obliterate an ideology and neither can a stable state be constructed from oblivion,” she told Radio 4’s “World at One” show.

Kearns, who is chair of the British government’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said she agreed with comments made by the UK’s former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who wrote in The Daily Telegraph on Monday that the legality of Israel’s military operation in Gaza was “being undermined.”

She said a truce could lead to a long-term ceasefire, which should be the focus of the Israeli government, rather than the eradication of Hamas through actions she said risked increasing support for the group within Gaza.

“Hamas is an ideology which recruits into its membership,” Kearns added.

Militants from the group killed more than 1,200 people inside Israel and took hundreds more hostage in a cross-border attack launched from Gaza on Oct. 7.

Kearns’ comments came after 10 members of Parliament wrote to British Foreign Secretary David Cameron on Monday, calling for him to push for an “immediate ceasefire” in a letter which also accused Israel’s military response to Hamas’ attack as “neither proportionate nor targeted.”

“We therefore urge you to recognise that space must be created for the emergence of a new political reality, and that space requires an immediate ceasefire.”

A number of us have written to @David_Cameron about Israel and Gaza. pic.twitter.com/ezriGVbIIM

— Kit Malthouse MP (@kitmalthouse) December 18, 2023

International pressure on Israel has grown over the high number of civilian deaths in its retaliatory strikes on Gaza, which health ministry officials in the enclave have said total more than 18,000.

Cameron on Sunday backed comments made last week by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who called for a “sustainable ceasefire” in what many saw as a change of tone from the UK government, which had consistently reiterated Israel’s “right to defend itself” in the wake of the attacks.

“Our goal cannot simply be an end to fighting today: It must be peace lasting for days, years, generations,” Cameron wrote in The Sunday Times.