LONDON: Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza have been “deliberately disproportionate” and amount to “collective punishment,” Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said on Thursday, in unusually robust criticism of a close British ally

Clegg made his comments on the tenth day of fighting between Israel and Hamas during a five-hour humanitarian truce which prompted a temporary halt to Israel’s airstrikes as well as rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza into Israel.

“I really do think now the Israeli response appears to be deliberately disproportionate, it is amounting now to a disproportionate form of collective punishment,” Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the country’s coalition, told Britain’s LBC radio station.

“I really would now call on the Israel Government to stop. They’ve proved their point,” he said. He said he respected Israel’s right to defend itself.

Meanwhile, former US President Bill Clinton has warned Israel about “isolating itself from world opinion” due to repeated conflicts in Gaza.

“Over the long run it is not good for Israel to keep isolating itself from world opinion because of the absence of a viable peace process,” Clinton told the Indian NDTV news channel on Wednesday.

“In the short to medium term, Hamas can inflict terrible public relations damage on Israel by forcing it to kill Palestinian civilians to counter Hamas,” he added.

Hamas had a “strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own (Palestinian) civilians so the rest of the world will condemn them,” while Israel couldn’t “look like fools” by not responding to the heavy missile attacks.

Clinton, who pushed hard while president for a comprehensive peace deal at a Camp David summit in 2000, urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resume serious talks.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu could and should make a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians,” he said, adding that he believed 60 percent of Israelis would support him.

The objective of all should be “a peace process that gets Israel security recognition and peace and that gets the Palestinians their state,” he said.