Over 600 lawyers and experts, including three former Supreme Court judges, warned UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a letter over the situation in Gaza, with the court concluding the UK was legally obliged to minimise the “plausible risk of genocide,” according to LBC.
Supreme Court President Lady Hale, former Supreme Court justices Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson were among those who signed the 17-page letter, alongside nine other judges.
“While we welcome the increasingly robust calls by your government for a cessation of fighting and the unobstructed entry to Gaza of humanitarian assistance, simultaneously to continue (…) the sale of weapons and weapons systems to Israel (…) falls significantly short of your government’s obligations under international law.”
This followed the killing of seven aid workers, including three British nationals, in an Israeli drone strike in the Gaza Strip on Monday night.
The Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party and senior foreign policy figures, including a former UK national security adviser, called for a suspension of UK arms sales.
Labour, meanwhile, argued that arms sales should be halted if government lawyers believed Israel risked violating international law. However, Sunak defended his decision to continue the UK’s “careful export licensing regime” on Wednesday amid growing calls to halt all weapons sales to Israel.
Get more aid into Gaza: That’s what we’ve consistently called for and what we want to see actually is an immediate humanitarian pause to allow more aid in, and crucially the hostages to be released, and that’s what we’ll continue to push for.
The charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) confirmed that British victims John Chapman, 57, James “Jim” Henderson, 33, and James Kirby, 47, who worked in the charity’s security team, were among those killed when the convoy was struck after unloading food in Gaza on Monday night.
The drone strike also killed Australian Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, American-Canadian dual citizen Jacob Flickinger, Polish national Damian Sobol and Palestinian Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey urged the government to suspend arms sales to Israel, calling it “completely unacceptable.”
“The deaths of these British aid workers in Gaza is an absolute disgrace. These brave people were trying to help starving families in Gaza. Clearly, the thought that British-made arms could have been used in strikes such as these is completely unacceptable. The Government must take swift action to suspend arms exports to Israel. We must redouble our efforts to secure an immediate bilateral ceasefire.”
Export licences cannot continue to be granted for British arms bound for Israel if there is a risk that the weapons could be used in serious breach of international humanitarian law.
Before MPs left Parliament for the Easter recess, Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell told the House of Commons that UK arms exports accounted for “0.02% of Israel’s military imports” when questioned about the legal advice given by shadow foreign secretary David Lammy.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, wrote to Sunak, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, and Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle calling for an immediate recall of Parliament.
This situation demands that the Prime Minister comes to Parliament without further delay to outline the UK Government’s response to the killing of UK citizens by Israel.
