Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said UK Border Force officials are strategically placed in Egypt, ready to rescue up to 200 British citizens who are trapped in the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip.
The Foreign Office says it is in contact with around 200 UK nationals in Gaza, who are believed to include SNP leader Humza Yousaf’s mother-in-law, Elizabeth El-Nakla, and her husband, Maged, who became trapped after arriving to visit relatives just days before Hamas terrorists attacked Israel.
On Thursday, Mr. Sunak said he was trying to get a pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas to create a “safer environment” for British nationals to leave the 25-mile long strip.
A single border crossing into Egypt at Rafah has been opened, but Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of UNRWA, a United Nations agency, said only a “handful of aid convoys” had been allowed through and food and water were running out in Gaza.
Sunak ‘Keen to Bring Them Home’
He said: “We’re very keen to be able to bring them out and bring them home. What I can tell you is we’ve pre-positioned Border Force teams to Egypt. So that if there is a possibility for our nationals to cross the Rafah crossing, we’re ready to get them in and bring them back.”Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told Sky News on Friday, “We’ve been in intense discussions with partners in the region, but we want the Border Force to be there to be prepared and ready if and when we can get the hostages out.”
“So it’s preparation so that we can be there, so we’ve got everything available if we can get them out. But right now we still need to agree that and it still needs to be facilitated,” she added.
The Labour Party’s official position remains that Israel has a right to defend itself and the air strikes on Gaza are covered by that, but the party’s leader is under intense pressure to call for a ceasefire.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has become the latest to break with the party line and call for a ceasefire.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he wrote: “Thousands of innocent civilians have already been killed in Israel and Gaza. With the humanitarian crisis set to deteriorate even further, I’m calling for a ceasefire.”
The crisis began on Oct. 7 when hundreds of Hamas terrorists surged out of Gaza and attacked military and civilian targets inside Israel, killing 1,400 Israelis, including women and children.
Israel claims the Hamas attackers even beheaded babies in one attack.
Lawyers Send Open Letter to Government
Meanwhile 260 British lawyers have sent an open letter to Mr. Sunak urging him to “act urgently” in Gaza.The letter to Mr. Sunak, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, calls on the government to “act urgently to fulfil its international legal obligations” in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Among those who signed the letter are the the former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association of England and Wales, Andrew Hall, the former counsel general for Wales, Theodore Huckle, and the former chairman of the General Council of the Bar of Northern Ireland, Brian Fee.
The letter says, “We are moved to intervene because, in a region already accustomed to great suffering, the death and other harm visited on individuals, families and whole communities in the last 20 days has been truly terrible.”
“The starvation of a civilian population as a method of warfare, including wilfully impeding adequate relief supplies, as Israel is doing in Gaza, is strictly prohibited under customary international law … and constitutes a war crime,” it adds.
The letter says: “Hamas’s war crimes cannot be justified by reference to prior war crimes by Israel; neither do they justify further such crimes by Israel in its response, which must comply with international law.”
