"A very generous proposal for a 40-day ceasefire and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in return for the release of the hostages" has been put to Hamas, Cameron said at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

A Hamas delegation is due in Egypt later today to give its response to the latest proposals from mediators for a truce in Gaza linked to the release of the hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist movement, after almost seven months of war between Israel and Hamas in the Palestinian territory.

"I hope that Hamas will accept this deal and, frankly, all the pressure of the world and all the eyes of the world should be on them today to say accept this deal," Cameron said.

"The deal on offer will lead to an end to the fighting, which is what we all desperately want to see," he added.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas for months, and the latest moves appear to suggest a new push to end the fighting.

The British foreign secretary also called for a "political horizon for a two-state solution", with an independent Palestine existing alongside Israel.

"Those responsible [for the 7 October attack], the leaders of Hamas, must leave Gaza and the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza must be dismantled," he said.

"The Palestinian people must have a political future, but the security of Israel must also be assured, and those two things must go hand in hand," he added.

On 7 October last year, fighters from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) – which has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007 and is classified as a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union and Israel – carried out an attack on Israeli territory unprecedented in scale since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, killing 1,163 people, most of them civilians.

They also took 250 hostages, around 130 of whom remain in captivity and 34 of whom are believed to have died, according to the latest figures from the Israeli authorities.

In retaliation, Israel declared a war to "eradicate" Hamas, which is now in its 206th day and continues to threaten to spread to the entire Middle East region. So far, it has caused 34,454 deaths in the Gaza Strip, over 77,000 injuries and thousands of people missing who are presumed to be buried in the rubble, most of them civilians, according to the latest figures from the local authorities.

The conflict has also caused almost two million people to be displaced, plunging the overpopulated and impoverished Palestinian enclave into a serious humanitarian crisis, with over 1.1 million people in a "catastrophic hunger situation" that is claiming lives – "the highest number ever recorded" by the UN in its studies on food security in the world.

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