Government appears to withdraw from past assertion by Boris Johnson amid shift to more pointed criticism of Israeli campaign in Gaza

The British government appears to have withdrawn an assertion made by the former prime minister Boris Johnson that the international criminal court has no jurisdiction in Israel, amid a wider western shift to more pointed criticism of the way Israel is conducting its campaign to remove Hamas from Gaza.

In a statement to MPs on Tuesday, the Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said: “It is not for ministers to seek to state where the ICC has jurisdiction; that is for the chief prosecutor. The chief prosecutor has not been silent on this matter, and I am sure he will continue to express his views.”