Baroness Warsi Quits Over Gaza: First Interview With Former Foreign Office Minister

By: Mehdi Hasan

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/

Foreign Office minister Baroness Warsi has dramatically quit the government, citing the UK’s “morally indefensible” position on the conflict in Gaza.

In her resignation letter to the prime minister, David Cameron, Warsi wrote that Britain’s support for Israeli military action against Hamas, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,800 Palestinians over the past month, “is morally indefensible, is not in Britain’s national interest and will have a long term detrimental impact on our reputation”.

Warsi’s decision to quit makes hers the first ministerial resignation ‘on principle’ since the coalition was formed in 2010 and comes in the wake of attacks on the prime minister’s handling of the Gaza crisis by Labour leader Ed Miliband – and a 72-hour humanitarian truce agreed between Israel and Hamas in Cairo on Monday evening.

Speaking exclusively to The Huffington Post UK in her first interview since resigning on Tuesday morning, the Tory peer accused the coalition of failing to act as an “honest broker” in the Middle East and called for an immediate arms embargo against Israel.

“The British government can only play a constructive role in solving the Middle East crisis if it is an honest broker,” the former Foreign Office minister said, “and at the moment I do not think it is.”