Isaac Herzog says ‘when allies meet they can argue’ after some Labour MPs condemn Downing Street meeting
The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, had a “tough” set of exchanges over humanitarian aid in Gaza at a Downing Street meeting, amid street protests demanding Herzog’s arrest as a war criminal.
Herzog, speaking to the Chatham House thinktank immediately after the meeting, said he had offered the British government a fact-finding mission to look at the levels of aid entering Gaza. He denied there was any famine and blamed the high civilian death toll on Hamas placing missiles in living rooms.
He offered no apology for the attack on Hamas’s leadership in Doha on Tuesday, accusing Qatar of being allies of Hamas rather than mediators.
Downing Street said Starmer “condemned Israel’s action in Doha yesterday as completely unacceptable. He said the strikes were a flagrant violation of a key partner’s sovereignty and do nothing to secure the peace we all desperately want to see.
