London: Israel had no option but to shoot dead protesters, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, after being confronted over the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians by a former leader of Britain’s Conservative party.
Netanyahu is in Britain as part of a three-day tour of Europe, including stops in Berlin and Paris, to drum up Western support for curbing Iran’s growing sphere of influence in the Middle East, particularly in Israel’s neighbour Syria.
But British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have used their meetings to register their concerns about the deaths on the Gaza border, while Britain’s foreign secretary Boris Johnson has restated a call for an independent inquiry.
The issue was also raised during a speaking appearance to an audience in London hosted by the centre-right think tank The Policy Exchange by the former Tory leader and peer Michael Howard, who confronted Netanyahu.
Read the article by Latika Bourke in The Sydney Morning Herald.