A former senior British diplomat called yesterday for the international community to start talks with Hamas in a bid to broker peace for Palestine.

Sir John Holmes, who was UN emergency relief co-ordinator during the last Israeli invasion of Palestine in 2009, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Hamas is not going to go away and I think that we have accept that, instead of just isolating Hamas, we need to talk to them.

“I accept Israel is going to say: ‘Well, that is just rewarding terrorism,’ but that is the kind of language and attitude we have to get away from.

“The rest of the world has to say: ‘We can’t go on like this.’ We have to talk to Hamas … Let’s talk to them as we did talk to others and try to bring them into the political process and stop pretending they are going to go away.”