UK Foreign Secretary visits Israel, West Bank and calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza

TEL AVIV, July 14 (Agencies): The new British foreign secretary called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sunday, his second international trip since Labour’s resounding victory in elections earlier this month.
David Lammy said the ongoing war in Gaza is “intolerable” and stressed in meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leadership that Britain wants to assist with diplomatic efforts “securing a ceasefire deal and creating the space for a credible and irreversible pathway toward a two-state solution.”
Lammy met Sunday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and in the West Bank city of Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He will meet with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday. During his visit, Lammy will also meet with families of hostages currently being held in Gaza who have ties to the UK He called for the release of all hostages and a dramatic increase in the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
Lammy demanded Israel halt settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, and said that the Palestinian Authority needs to be “reformed and empowered.”
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed on Saturday the Kingdom’s condemnation and denunciation in the strongest terms of the “continued genocidal massacres against the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli war machine.”
The ministry drew particular attention to the latest targeting of displaced Palestinians at camps in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of 100 people.
Saudi Arabia renewed its call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and the provision of protection to unarmed civilians in all occupied Palestinian territories.