Law Conservative party row threatens to subsume legal assessment of war

A legal assessment by the UK Foreign Office of whether Israel is in breach of international humanitarian law in Gaza risks being subsumed in a Conservative row over the party's loyalty to the country, and by rival judgments on the damage to British interests in the wider Middle East if the UK is not seen to distance itself from Israel's methods.

- Patrick Wintour

Judging by the last Tory leadership contest, in which Liz Truss courted votes by promising to transfer the UK embassy to Jerusalem, there is a good chance Israel will feature in any leadership debate after a predicted general election defeat this year. For weeks there have been grumblings among pro-Israeli Conservative MPs, sometimes expressed in private meetings with the foreign secretary, David Cameron, that he should dial back his criticism of Israel and accept that, if it is in the UK's strategic interest for Hamas to be defeated, lives may have to be lost due to the war.

It does not help that many of Israel's strongest supporters in the Conservatives are on the party's right and Lord Cameron is seen as a centrist in a party that laid modernisation to rest with his resignation in 2016.

The instinctively pro-Israel mood on the Tory benches was reflected during the last Commons statement made to MPs on Gaza by the Foreign Office minister, Andrew Mitchell, on 26 March. Many Tory backbenchers expressed alarm that British diplomats had backed a UN Security Council resolution that they felt unjustifiably delinked a ceasefire from the release of Israeli hostages.