Asked if a ceasefire in the Middle East is more likely, Sir John Sawers said the situation will not change “a great deal”.
Sir John told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips that Hamas may now focus on international terror, after Israeli troops killed Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attacks last year.
He said: “Islamic terrorism may actually get a further boost, if that’s the right word, from events in the Middle East.
“The frustrations that we’ll be seeing because of the lack of movement on the Palestinian question, because of the violence people are witnessing every day.
“And it could be that Hezbollah and Hamas, the new leaderships there, are focused so much on violence that they become not just terrorist organisations designated by western countries and aimed against Israel, but they could revert back to international terrorism, including here in the UK.”
He added that the police and intelligence agencies in this country should be “on their toes” and watch for rising signs of Islamic terror.
Sir Keir Starmer urged a ceasefire in the Middle East in a telephone call with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday.
The conversation came on the day a drone was launched at Mr Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea, on the Israeli coast, in an apparent assassination attempt.
The Prime Minister expressed alarm at the news, a Downing Street spokesperson said, before discussing the wider situation in the Middle East following the death of Sinwar on Wednesday.
The spokesperson said Sir Keir described Sinwar as “a brutal terrorist” who left the world “a better place without him”.
It followed comments made by Sir Keir in Berlin on Friday urging the international community to “make the most of” the “opportunity” presented by Sinwar’s death to secure a ceasefire.
But he also warned the world would not tolerate “any more excuses” for not allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, where more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive.
The United States has also expressed concern about the amount of aid entering Gaza, warning in a letter to the Israeli government that it could suspend military funding for Tel Aviv if the humanitarian situation continued to deteriorate.
Both Israel and Hamas have signalled an unwillingness to call a ceasefire in the wake of Sinwar’s death, while Lebanese militant group Hezbollah continues to carry out rocket attacks.
Mr Netanyahu said the attack on his home, which he blamed on Hezbollah, had been a “grave mistake”.
He said: “This will not deter me or the State of Israel from continuing our just war against our enemies in order to secure our future.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has also vowed that Hamas will fight on.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, which carried out its own attack on Israel with ballistic missiles earlier this month.
