Foreign secretary receives rare public rebuke as No 10 rows back by saying Israel ‘at risk’ of breaching rules

Downing Street has rejected David Lammy’s assessment that Israel has broken international law by blocking aid to Gaza, in a rare public censure for the foreign secretary.

A spokesperson for the prime minister said on Tuesday morning Israel was “at risk” of breaching humanitarian law, despite Lammy having told the Commons on Monday that the country had definitely done so.

The remarks, hours after Israel launched a wave of airstrikes on Gaza, mark a climbdown after Lammy appeared to have changed the government’s position on one of the most sensitive foreign policy questions it faces.

The public rebuke came less than 24 hours after Lammy told the Commons he believed Israel’s actions broke international law – a key test for whether the UK can continue to sell weapons to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

  • frankPodmore@slrpnk.netMEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    Is this one of those things where they’re using technical legal language or is it an actual walking back of Lammy’s comments?

    EDIT: I mean like if this was a domestic criminal case in progress, they’d always say ‘the suspect’ in an official statement, even if it was overwhelmingly clear that ‘the suspect’ was the perpetrator. Is something similar happening here?

    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.mlOP
      12·
      3 days ago

      Directly contradicting it. Lammy said Israel was in active violation yesterday:

      https://lemmy.ml/post/27344501

      Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that while Israel “quite rightly must defend its own security”, the ongoing blockade of goods and supplies to the strip was a “breach of international law”.