Lisa Nandy urges support for UN relief agency for Palestinians

Lisa Nandy, the UK’s shadow minister for international development, has called for support for the UN relief agency, Unrwa, warning that “time has run out for hundreds of thousands” of people in Gaza.

Nandy is in Washington this week attending the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund with a message of how the UK’s humanitarian and development policy will change if Labour, as expected, forms the next government by the end of this year.

However, she accepted that she would have to address widespread perceptions across the global south of Britain’s unreliability as a partner and its double standards on the world stage, an image exacerbated by the war in Gaza and the consequent famine rolling over the Palestinian coastal strip.

Nandy outlined ways in which Labour policy on Israel and Gaza would differ starkly from the current government’s, starting with actions to address a famine, which international experts and US officials say has already begun.

Israeli authorities are refusing to deal with Unrwa even though it is by far the biggest aid agency in Gaza and has helped support Palestinian refugees across the region for more than seven decades.

Nandy said a critical difference between Labour and the Tories on Israel and the occupied territories was that “we are crystal clear that unless international law is upheld, there can be no accountability.