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Jerusalem has told French and British government ministers it expects support in attacking Iran should the Islamic Republic launch a retaliatory strike on Israel after former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran last month. The alarming statement by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz raises fears that Britain could be dragged into a major conflict should chaos break out in the Middle East in the event of an Iranian attack on Israel.
‘If Iran attacks, we expect the coalition to join Israel not only in defence but also in attacking significant targets in Iran,’ Foreign Minister Israel Katz told his French and UK counterparts today. He also warned Iran – which backs Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Yemen, all of whom have attacked Israel since the Gaza war started – to stop their assaults on Israeli soil, describing the country as ‘the head of the axis of evil’.
Meanwhile, international diplomacy to prevent the war in Gaza from spreading into a wider regional conflict intensified. While British Foreign Secretary David Lammy met with French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné and Katz, internationally mediated cease-fire talks in Qatar rolled into their second day. The push for an end to the Israel-Hamas war – along with Israel expressing its expectation of military support from Britain and France – came as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza climbed past 40,000.
Britain, alongside the likes of the US and France, is one of Israel’s foremost allies on the international stage and has supplied Jerusalem with a steady flow of arms, as well as diplomatic support, since the October 7 attacks. But Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has taken a tougher stance on Israel since winning a landslide election victory last month, despite losing four seats to pro-Palestinian activists. Lammy has restored funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency amid claims that workers participated in the October 7 attacks, which killed roughly 1,200 people.
And Labour has dropped the UK’s objections to a decision by an International Criminal Court prosecutor to pursue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant amid the court’s assessment they bear responsibility for alleged war crimes in Gaza. International mediators believe the best hope for calming tensions in the Middle East would be a deal between Israel and Hamas to halt the fighting and secure the release of Israeli hostages.
Diplomats hope such a deal, if achieved in short order, would persuade Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah to hold off on retaliating for the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut along with Haniyeh’s assassination. Lammy and Séjourné appeared hopeful that a cease-fire in Gaza could be achieved after meeting with Katz today, in spite of his expectation that they would agree to attack Iran. Britain’s foreign secretary said Israeli officials told him they were on the verge of securing a cease-fire amid the ongoing negotiations in Qatar.
‘As we head now to 315 days of war, the time for a deal for those hostages to be returned, for aid to get in in the quantities that are necessary in Gaza and for the fighting to stop is now,’ Lammy said. But Hamas has rejected Israel’s latest demands, which include a lasting military presence along the border with Egypt and a line bisecting Gaza where it would search Palestinians returning to their homes to root out militants. Israel in return accuses Hamas of adding its own new demands to a previously agreed-upon plan.
White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby called the ongoing talks in Qatar an ‘important step’, but stressed that a lot of work remains given the complexity of the agreement. A US official briefed on Thursday’s talks called the discussion ‘constructive’, but gave no further insight given he was not authorised to speak on the subject. Both sides have agreed in principle to a plan President Joe Biden announced on May 31, and Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan said the group is only interested in discussing the implementation of that agreement, not in further negotiations over its content.
Hamas has declined to take part directly in talks this week, but its senior officials, who reside in Qatar, are ready to discuss any proposals from the mediators. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies that Israel has made new demands, but he has also repeatedly raised questions over whether the cease-fire would last, saying Israel remains committed to ‘total victory’ against Hamas and the release of all the hostages. The most intractable dispute has been over the transition from the first phase of the cease-fire – when women, children and other vulnerable hostages would be released – and the second, when captive Israeli soldiers would be freed and a permanent cease-fire would take hold.
Hamas is concerned that Israel will resume the war after the first batch of hostages is released. Israel worries that Hamas will drag out the talks on releasing the remaining hostages indefinitely. Meanwhile, Hezbollah released a video today with Hebrew and English subtitles, showing underground tunnels where trucks were transporting long-range missiles in a clear message to Israel.
A Hezbollah official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was speaking about military affairs, said the missiles in the video have a range of about 140 kilometres (86 miles), capable of reaching deep inside Israel. Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets, missiles and drones that the group says give it the ability to hit anywhere in Israel. The Iran-backed Lebanese group started attacking Israel on October 8 and says it will only stop when the Gaza war ends.
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