- Immediately stop all arms trade with Israel.
- Publish any legal advice it has received that Israel is breaking international law.
On the 2nd April 2024, Israel killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, including UK citizens, in targeted air strikes in the Gaza Strip. This attack, on an agency distributing food to a population facing famine, is part of the broader Israeli war crime - as acknowledged by the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell - of intentionally using starvation as a weapon of war. It also comes following Israel’s two week siege on al-Shifa hospital, killing over 400 Palestinians and leaving the hospital complex in ruins.
Since October, Israel has killed over 32,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, 70% of whom have been women and children. In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down an interim ruling affirming there is plausible evidence Israel is committing genocidal acts.
UN experts have called on all states to immediately suspend arms exports to Israel, as required by the 1949 Geneva Conventions and to comply with the Genocide Convention. The UK is putting itself at legal risk by ignoring this advice, and is also isolating itself from key international partners including Canada, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy, who have all suspended their arms exports to Israel.
The UK’s Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, under which all arms exports are assessed, specifies that export licences should not be issued if there is a “clear risk” arms exports might be used in a “serious violation of international humanitarian law”. The ICJ ruling of plausible genocide therefore requires the UK to immediately halt arms transfers to Israel. It is also understood the government has received - though not published - legal advice that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law which would also require a suspension of arms exports.