By IRNA,
London : David Miliband, the front-runner to be Britain’s next Labour leader, has stepped up criticism of Israel after being no longer confined to the diplomatic-speak of when he was foreign secretary.
The attack by the Israeli defence forces on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla is the “latest in a series of self-defeating and deadly moves by successive Israeli Governments in Gaza,” Miliband said.
“We on the Opposition Benches join the international condemnation of an operation that was not self-defence but defence of a failed policy,” he said in calling on the new British coalition government to use the same language, which he was previously reluctant to do.
Miliband’s more outspoken tone came as MP after MP lined up in parliament Wednesday to condemn Israel’s killing of passengers on board the humanitarian mission to break the three-year siege while it was in international waters.
Some of the 37 Britons captured by Israel when it impounded the boats have started to return to the UK, mostly via Turkey, complaining about their treatment in custody and voicing concern about those still missing.
Amongst others, Paveen Yaqub from Oldham in northern England told her brother that “she had to go on hunger strike to be allowed to make the first phone call home to say she was safe.”
“She is shocked, angry, upset and grieving for those who were killed and there are many still missing,” her younger sister Nosheen Yacub also told the local Huddersfield Examiner on Thursday morning,
In Turkey, Yavuz Dede, the vice president of the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, has also alleged Israel had failed to account for all the passengers and crews and was deliberately delaying their return to cover up the missing persons.
“We see this delay in the planes’ (taking off) as an attempt to disguise the loss of people,” Dede told a press conference at the foundation’s Istanbul headquarters.
Miliband criticised the government’s apparent lack of concern for the welfare of British nationalists involved, which included one that was reportedly injured by Israeli troops when they attacked the flotilla.
“The lack of clarity about the position of British nationals is completely unacceptable. We are talking about 37 people, not 37,000 people,” he said.
“They have a right to consular support; it says so in their passports. They should be given that support immediately. If it is being denied, we should be denouncing that, not saying that we are disappointed by it,” he told Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Ireland is already protesting about the treatment of one of its nationals, Fiachra O Luain, who was injured while passing through security at Ben Gurion airport to board flights out of Israel on Wednesday night.
“We have a copy of the doctor’s assessment of his condition and how he might have received his injuries,” a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin said about O Luain, who is currently in an Istanbul hospital.
“If there is evidence that he was assaulted in Ben Gurion, we will be raising this with Israeli authorities and looking for a full account of what occurred,” the spokesman was quoted saying by the Irish Times.