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The Gaza Tribunal Part II:
What are Britain’s legal resposibilities?
As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a High Contracting Party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a party to the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and a state with longstanding diplomatic, military and economic ties to Israel, the United Kingdom has heightened responsibilities in relation to Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the wider Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Those responsibilities are not only political—they are legal duties arising under treaty law, customary international law, and peremptory norms (jus cogens).
This section sets out: (1) the UK’s obligations as a matter of state responsibility, including duties owed to the international community as a whole; (2) the implications of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2024 Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem; and (3) the most immediate areas where UK policy risks unlawful assistance, complicity, or individual criminal liability.
1. The Legal Framework: State Responsibility and Erga Omnes Obligations
1.1. The Sources of the UK’s Obligations
International responsibility arises where conduct attributable to a state—by act or omission—breaches an international obligation. Attribution extends to all organs of the government, including ministers, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies. Beyond bilateral duties, certain obligations are owed erga omnes, meaning, to the international community as a whole, including according to the basic rules protecting peoples’ right to self determination and the fundamental prohibitions
international humanitarian law and genocide prevention. [85] [84]
(Notes)
[84] International Law Commission, Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (2001) (“ARSIWA”), arts 2–4
[85] Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company, Limited (Belgium v Spain) (Second Phase) [1970] ICJ Rep 3, paras. 33–34
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Where such obligations are at stake, third states do not have discretion to treat compliance as optional or purely political. Five bodies of law are central to the UK’s responsibilities in this context: [86]
1.The Geneva Conventions (1949): as a High Contracting Party, the UK is bound by Common Article 1 to “respect and ensure respect” for international humanitarian law (IHL), which prohibits targeting civilians, collective punishment, unlawful displacement, and denial of humanitarian relief;
2.The Genocide Convention (1948): obliges Britain to prevent and punish genocide. This duty is proactive and extends beyond its territory, requiring action wherever the risk of genocide exists. This duty was effectuated by the provisional measures of the ICJ in South Africa v Israel, January 2024. [87] [89]
3.The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) (1998): as a state party, the UK must co-operate fully with the ICC, including executing arrest warrants for individuals suspected of crimes in Gaza, and must refrain from conduct that frustrates the Court’s mandate;
4.Customary rules of state responsibility as articulated by the ILC’s Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) (2001), with a focus on obligations with erga omnes character (obligations owed toward all). Such obligations stem from violations of jus cogens norms including the right to self-determination, the prohibition against racial discrimination and apartheid, and the prohibition against annexation through force. These duties were ascertained again by the ICJ in its Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 in Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. [88]
5.Britain’s domestic legislation, including the International Criminal Court Act 2001 and export control laws, which require it to criminalise and prevent grave international crimes and to deny arms transfers where there’s a real risk of misuse.
(Notes)
[86] Geneva Convention (I) for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (adopted 12 August 1949, entered into force 21 October 1950) 75 UNTS 31, Common art 1
[87] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (adopted 9 December 1948, entered into force 12 January 1951) 78 UNTS 277, art I
[88] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (adopted 17 July 1998, entered into force 1 July 2002) 2187 UNTS 90, arts. 86–89
[89] International Law Commission, “Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, with commentaries, in Report of the International Law Commission on the Work of its Fifty-third Session,” United Nations General Assembly Records, 56th Sess., Supp. No. 10, at 43, UN Doc. A/56/10 (2001) Annex to GA Res. 56/83 (12 Dec. 2001). [hereinafter ARISWA]
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1.2. The ICJ Provisional Order in South Africa v Israel, January 2024
In South Africa v Israel (2024), the ICJ indicated provisional measures on January 26, 2024.
South Africa had requested “provisional measures” in order to prevent “imminent and irreparable loss” of lives in Gaza. South Africa’s application was made on the grounds that The State of Israel has committed acts of genocide and was violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention.
The ICJ found that “at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible.” This included “the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article 3 of the Genocide Convention, and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance with the latter’s obligations under the Convention.” The ICJ rules that there was a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to those rights. [90] [91]
The Order places all States on clear notice that their duty to prevent genocide is engaged. This obligation flows directly from Article 1 of the Genocide Convention, which requires States to undertake measures “to prevent and to punish genocide.” Invoking the Bosnia v Serbia case, the ICJ clarified that these obligations become active once “its organs were aware that genocide was about to be committed or was under way, and if the aid and assistance supplied, from the moment they became so aware onwards, to the perpetrators of the criminal acts… enabled or facilitated the commission of the acts. In other words, the duty to prevent genocide begins the moment that a State becomes aware of the existence of a serious risk that genocide may be committed. The ICJ’s Order found that “a real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible”. From this moment, States could no longer pretend that they were not aware of the risk of genocide. At the time of our Report’s publication, more than 25 months have passed since this Order was handed down.
(Notes)
[90] Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (South Africa v Israel), Order of 26 January 2024 (Provisional Measures), paras. 54–74, 78–86
[91] Irene Pietropaoli, “Obligations of Third States and Corporations to Prevent and Punish Genocide in Gaza,” June 5, 2024, content/uploads/2024/06/Obligations-of-Third-States-and-Corporations-to-Prevent-and-Punish-Genocide-in-Gaza-3.pdf The Gaza https://www.somo.nl/wp
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The UK’s obligations under the Geneva Convention were further highlighted two months later when the ICJ issued a second round of provisional measures. On March 28, 2024, the Court ordered intensified actions to prevent genocide in Gaza, calling on Israel to ensure unhindered, large-scale aid and to prevent military actions violating the Genocide Convention.
In September 2025, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel found that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, reiterating the urgency of the duty to prevent genocide. [92]
1.3. The ICJ’s 2024 Advisory Opinion, July 2024
On July 19, 2024, the ICJ delivered an Advisory Opinion concluding that Israel’s continued presence in the OPT is unlawful in its entirety, involving breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as peremptory norms including the Palestinian people’s right to self determination, the prohibition on acquisition of territory by force, and the prohibition of apartheid and racial segregation. [93] The Court reaffirmed that third states have interlocking duties of (i) non recognition, (ii) non assistance, and (iii) co operation to bring the unlawful situation to an end. The obligation of non-assistance, the Court stated, entails a duty “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the OPT.” This encompasses a comprehensive obligation on the part of third states to “prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the OPT.” This does not only include trade and investment relations with the OPT but also with Israel as a whole, to the extent that these assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation.
The Court’s declaration reaffirmed customary international legal principles pertaining to erga omnes obligations grounded in customary international law. Paragraph 274 reads: “Among the obligations erga omnes violated by Israel are the obligation to respect the right of the Palestinian people to self determination and the obligation arising from the prohibition of the use of force to acquire territory as well as certain of its obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”
(Notes)
[92] The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, Legal Analysis of the Conduct of Israel in Gaza Pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, September 16, 2025, UN Doc. A/HRC/60/CRP.3
[93] International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, Advisory Opinion, July 19, 2024, paras 260–278. (hereinafter Advisory Opinion of July 2024)
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The ICJ concluded that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal in its entirety. The Court found that Israel has violated a number of peremptory (jus cogens) norms, including the right of self-determination, the basic norms of international humanitarian law, the prohibition against racial discrimination and apartheid, and the prohibition on annexation. Jus cogens norms are hierarchical to other norms of international law, and their violation sets in motion obligations for all states. The Court’s ruling is that Israel’s very presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal and is sustained only through the ongoing use of force—constituting an act of aggression of a continuing character. The Court’s unambiguous finding authoritatively ascertains that Israel’s presence in the OPT must end “as rapidly as possible.” [94] [95]
The Court stressed the responsibilities of third state parties as outlined in the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA). According to customary international law, in such a context third states have a duty to “cooperate to bring [the grave illegality] to an end through lawful means,” and not to “recognise as lawful a situation created” by the grave illegality. The purpose of third state responsibility is to prompt adherence to international law by peacefully using collective leverage against the perpetrating state. [96]
Indeed, paragraph 278 of the ICJ’s advisory opinion of July 2024, which outlines third-state responsibility, is arguably one of the most significant paragraphs of the ruling. [97]
(Notes)
[94] ICJ, Advisory Opinion of July 2024, para. 267 (emphasis added)
[95] ARSIWA, paras. 273–277
[96] International Law Commission, Report of the International Law Commission on the Work of Its Fifty-Third Session, United Nations General Assembly Official Records, 56th sess, Supp No 10, UN Doc A/56/10 (23 April – 1 June and 2 July – 10 August 2001) ch IV(E)(1) (‘Draft Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts’) arts. 40–1; Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall (n 4) 200 [159]
[97] This section has been cited frequently in subsequent statements by states, organisations and institutions endorsing the ICJ’s decision. For example, the Hague Group, which is a coalition of Global South states dedicated to taking collective action in support of Palestinian rights as articulated by international law, has referenced the Opinion in support of its decision to suspend arms transfers to Israel. The Hague Group, “Inaugural Joint Statement,” January 31, 2025, https://thehaguegroup.org/meetings-hague-en
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Building on customary international legal principles outlined in ARSIWA, the Court ruled that third-party states have “an obligation not to recognise any changes in the physical character or demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the territory occupied by Israel on 5 June 1967…” [98]
These territories include the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
The Court further ruled that all states must abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory or parts thereof which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory; to abstain, in the establishment and maintenance of diplomatic missions in Israel, from any recognition of its illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and to take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. [99]
To this end, in April 2024, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution where it called upon states to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel. [100]
2. How the UK can Fulfill its Legal Obligations
2.1 Arms Transfers and Military Components
The UK’s export of arms, components and dual use technology to Israel engages overlapping duties under the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), customary IHL, the Genocide Convention, and the general law of state responsibility. Under Article 6 of the ATT, a transfer is prohibited where a state has knowledge that the items would be used in genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes; and under Article 7, an export must be refused where, after assessment, there is an overriding risk that it would contribute to serious violations of IHL or international human rights law. In April 2024, [101] the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution in which it called upon states to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel.” [102] [103]
(Notes)
[98] Advisory Opinion of July 2024, para. 278
[99] Advisory Opinion of July 2024, para. 278
[100] Human Rights Council, Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the Obligation to Ensure Accountability and Justice (Geneva: United Nations, 2024) UN Doc. A/HRC/RES/55/28, April 16, 2024, para.14
[101] Human Rights Council, Human Rights Situation, UN Doc. A/HRC/RES/55/28, April 16, 2024, para.14
[102] Arms Trade Treaty, April 2, 2013, entered into force December 24, 2014, 3013 UNTS 269, arts. 6–7
[103] ARSIWA, art. 16
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Separate from the ATT, a state that knowingly provides aid or assistance that contributes to another state’s internationally wrongful acts may incur responsibility. Following the ICJ’s provisional measures recognising a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza, the legal and factual threshold for the UK to justify continued licensing becomes exceptionally difficult to sustain.
2.2 Intelligence, Training and Other Security Co operation
Security co operation—including intelligence sharing, training, joint research and operational support—may also amount to unlawful assistance if it materially contributes to grave breaches, or to maintaining an unlawful occupation and apartheid regime. Under ARSIWA Article 16, responsibility can arise where a state knowingly facilitates another state’s internationally wrongful acts. The Genocide Convention’s prevention duty and Common Article 1 further require the UK to withhold support where there is a serious risk it will contribute to prohibited conduct.
At the domestic level, the UK’s Overseas Security and Justice Assistance (OSJA) Guidance requires prior human rights risk assessments and directs that assistance should be withheld where there is a clear risk that UK support might contribute to violations. [104]
In the present context—where international courts and UN mechanisms have repeatedly documented patterns of serious violations—continued co operation creates acute legal risk.
2.3 Diplomatic Support, Public Statements and the Duty of Non Recognition
The duty of non recognition is breached not only by formal recognition of sovereignty claims, but also by acts implying acceptance of the unlawful situation—such as treating Israel as entitled to exercise sovereign “self defence” powers in territory it occupies or annexes or lending political cover that shields ongoing violations from accountability. The ICJ’s reasoning in the Chagos, Namibia and Wall advisory opinions—now extended to Israel’s presence in the OPT as a whole—makes clear that third states must not render aid or assistance in maintaining the unlawful situation. In the 2007 Bosnia and Herzegovina v Serbia and Montenegro judgment, the Court specified that states have the responsibility “to employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible,” particularly those states with “the capacity to influence effectively the action of persons likely to commit, or already committing, genocide.” [105] [106]
2.4 Humanitarian Relief, UNRWA Funding and Famine Risks [107]
IHL prohibits starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and requires parties to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need, subject to lawful control measures. Where a state has influence, Common Article 1 requires it to act to ensure respect for these rules. This generates both negative and positive obligations to ensure that the population is not deprived of objects necessary for its survival. Israel (as the occupying power) is not only prohibited from obstructing aid, but it is also obliged to ensure the population’s needs are met, as laid out in the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion in October 2025. [108]
In circumstances where credible evidence indicates a serious risk that conditions of life are being inflicted that could fall within Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention, decisions that foreseeably exacerbate humanitarian collapse—such as suspending or withholding of life saving assistance without adequate replacement—raise additional legal concerns. [109]
(Notes)
[104] UK Government, Overseas Security and Justice Assistance (OSJA) Human Rights Guidance, 2017: 4, www.assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a81781be5274a2e87dbdcc0/OSJA_Guidance_2017.pdf
[105] International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970) (Advisory Opinion) [1971] Rep 16; International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Advisory Opinion) [2004] Rep 136, para. 159; ICJ Advisory Opinion (19 July 2024), paras. 273–278
[106] Jinan Bastaki, “The ‘Capacity to Influence’, State Responsibility, and the Obligation to Prevent Genocide,” Opinio Juris, March 30, 2024, https://opiniojuris.org/2024/03/30/the-capacity-to-influence-state-responsibility-and-the-obligation-to-prevent-genocide/
[107] Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), June 8, 1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 3, arts. 54 and 70; Jean-Marie Henckaerts and Louise Doswald-Beck, eds., Customary International Humanitarian Law, Vol. 1: Rules (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
[108] International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion of 22 October 2025: Obligations of Israel in Relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and in Relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory
[109] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, art. II(c), Dec. 9, 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277, 280 (deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction)
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2.5 Trade, Investment and Corporate Involvement
The ICJ’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion emphasises that third states must prevent economic relations from entrenching the unlawful situation in the OPT. Since Israel’s economy and the settlement occupation enterprise are structurally integrated, narrow measures focused only on settlement goods are insufficient to discharge the duty of non assistance. The UK therefore has obligations to review trade and investment ties and to regulate corporate actors—including arms firms, technology companies, banks, pension funds and universities—where their conduct contributes to or benefits from maintaining unlawful occupation, apartheid, or serious IHL violations. [110]
2.6 Co operation with the ICC and Universal Accountability [111] Where the ICC issues arrest warrants relevant to crimes committed in Gaza or the OPT, the UK has a duty to co-operate, including by arresting and surrendering suspects who enter UK territory (including aerial and water territory), subject to any applicable immunities as interpreted under the Rome Statute. More broadly, the UK has negative (it must not obstruct) and positive (it has a duty to support) international accountability mechanisms and must preserve evidence, support independent investigations, and protect those documenting violations. [112]
3. Individual Criminal Liability: Aiding and Abetting, Incitement, and Superior Responsibility
International criminal law attaches responsibility to individuals, not only states. The foundational principle—articulated at Nuremberg—is that crimes under international law are committed by persons, and accountability of individuals is necessary to enforce international norms. [113]
(Notes)
[110] Who Profits, Financing Land Grab: The Direct Involvement of Israeli Banks in the Israeli Settlement Enterprise, February 2017, whoprofits.org///writable/uploads/publications/1668630886_81fd6b82b80761f6a853.pdf
[111] Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, Advisory Opinion, July 19, 2024, para. 278 (duty to abstain from economic relations and to prevent private actor support)
[112] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, arts. 86–89, July 17, 1998, 2187 U.N.T.S. 3, arts. 86–89 (co operation); art. 27 (irrelevance of official capacity) and related jurisprudence on immunities under the Statute
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Under the Rome Statute, individuals may incur liability for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression through (i) direct perpetration; (ii) aiding, abetting or otherwise assisting, including by providing the means for the crime; and (iii) direct and public incitement to genocide. These modes of liability are relevant where officials provide material support, authorise arms transfers, supply intelligence, or make public statements that could be understood as encouraging genocidal acts. [114]
In addition, civilian superiors can be liable for crimes committed by subordinates where they have effective control, are on notice of crimes, and fail to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent or repress them (the doctrine of superior responsibility). This doctrine matters for decision making structures around arms licensing, intelligence operations and military deployments, where responsibility is often mediated through institutional hierarchies. [115]
4. Conclusion
Taken together, the UK’s legal obligations require more than expressions of concern. At a minimum, they require: (i) immediate suspension of arms transfers and related military exports where there is a serious risk of use in genocide, crimes against humanity or grave IHL violations; (ii) suspension of intelligence sharing, training and other security co operation that could materially assist unlawful acts; (iii) measures to ensure non recognition and non assistance in respect of Israel’s unlawful presence in the OPT, including review of trade and investment ties including the review of its existing trade and investment relations with Israel and Israeli entities; (iv) support for humanitarian relief and opposition to policies producing famine conditions; (v) full co operation with international accountability, including the ICC and the relevant UN Special Rapporteurs, among others.
These duties arise from binding legal rules. They are triggered by the UK’s capacity to influence events, and sharpened by the ICJ’s January and March 2024 provisional measures placing states on notice of a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the Court’s July 2024 ruling about the illegality of Israel’s continued presence in the OPT. [116]
(Notes)
[114] Rome Statute, arts. 6 (genocide), 25(3)(c) (aiding and abetting / assistance) and 25(3)(e) (direct and public incitement); Elements of Crimes, ICC ASP/1/3 (2002)
[115] Rome Statute, art. 28(b) (superior responsibility for civilian superiors); ICC jurisprudence on “effective control” and “necessary and reasonable measures” (e.g., Bemba Appeal Judgment, ICC-01/05-01/08-3636)
[116] Bosnia v Serbia [2007] ICJ Rep 43, para. 430 (capacity to influence and due diligence); South Africa v Israel, Provisional Measures Order (26 January 2024); ICJ Advisory Opinion (19 July 2024)
“Britain has played and continues to play a key role in this genocide beyond complicity. It has provided the means to carry it out.”
RAMI KHAYAL
“The title of the tribunal is ‘an inquiry into British complicity,’ but in light of my research, it crosses a line to participation.”
MATT KENNARD
Part III: What has Britain’s role been in Gaza?
In Part Three, we examine the scale of Britain’s involvement in Israeli military operations in Gaza, including but not limited to the sale and supply of weapons, support from UK surveillance aircraft and use of Royal Air Force bases, particularly RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. We consulted a range of experts in this field including campaigners from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), lawyers from Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) as well as investigative journalists and academics conducting research in this area.
1. Supply of Arms
Britain has supplied Israel with weapons that have been used to extinguish human life and destroy vital infrastructure in Gaza, the West Bank and beyond.
1.1 Overview of Exports
We heard how Britain has long supplied Israel with weapons that have been used to commit atrocities against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Katie Fallon, the advocacy manager at the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), documented 633 million single individual export licences for the ten-year period from 2015 to 2024. This includes aircrafts, technology, grenades, bombs, missiles, military training equipment. In addition to these single licenses, CAAT has gathered evidence of another seventy-one “unlimited value open licenses,” which allows for an unlimited quantity of weapons and parts. The Tribunal was primarily concerned with the supply of arms between October 2023 until the present. Under the Conservative government, this totalled £48.9 million, comprising £3.9 million related to single licenses and £45 million related to the transfer of UK-made components to Israel for the F-35 programme. Additionally, there were four open-value licences (which do not limit the quantity or value of exports). Under the Labour government to date, the estimated value is £148 million for [117]
(Notes)
[117] These figures refer to the value of UK exports to Israel specifically as part of the F-35 programme. CAAT reached these figures by combining 1) the estimated value of the 15% of parts made in the UK for each plane delivered since 7th October 2023 with 2) the rate of spare part transfer The Gaza 66 Tribunal single licences and £162 million related to the transfer of UK-made components to Israel for the F-35 programme. Between October and December 2024 alone, more arms export licences were granted than were approved by the previous Government for the whole period between 2020 and 2023.
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As uncovered by Declassified UK, fourteen shipments of F-35 parts were sent directly from a British RAF base in Norfolk to Nevatim Air Base in Israel between October 2023 and September 2024. At least two of those shipments took place under the Labour government.
1.2 Partial Suspension and the F-35 Programme
In September 2024, the Labour Foreign Secretary announced a partial suspension of arms exports to Israel. This partial suspension came with a crucial exemption: the supply of components for the global F-35 programme, to which Israel has access.
F-35 jets have played a pivotal role in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. Indeed, as CAAT’s Fallon pointed out, on the same day that the Foreign Secretary announced that the F-35 parts would be exempted, a Danish NGO, Danwatch, revealed that an F-35 was used in July 2024 to drop three 2,000-pound bombs in an attack on a so-called safe zone in Khan Younis, killing ninety people. [118] Fallon noted that, at the time, Israel had forty-five F-35s, with a further thirty on order along with F-15s and F-16s. Approximately 15 percent of every F 35 aircraft that is produced and sold to Israel is made in the UK. At least seventy-five British companies are involved. Fallon outlined the reality: a huge portion of these parts are going to Israeli F-35s because of the number of sorties into Gaza and the extended flying hours that this entails; no other international partner, she maintained, is using F-35s at the same rate. Indeed, CAAT made a freedom of information request that showed that the use of the Open General Export Licence for F-35 spare parts to Israel nearly tripled in 2023. Since then, Israel has used F-35s at more than five times the normal rate of peacetime operations, which explains the large quantity of spare parts that Britain provided to Israel since Autumn 2023.
(Notes)
[118] Campaign Against Arms Trade, “Government Exempts F-35 from Export Licence Suspension – On Same Day Evidence Emerges Israel Used It in Attack on Gaza ‘Safe Zone,’ September 2, 2024, https://caat.org.uk/news/investigation-reveals-israel-used-partly-uk-made-f-35-in-attack-on-gaza humanitarian-zone-in-july-killing-90/; Danwatch, “Major Civilian Casualties: Danish-equipped Fighter Jets behind Bloody Attack in Gaza,” September 1, 2024, https://danwatch.dk/en/major-civilian-casualties-danish-equipped-fighter-jets-behind-bloody-attack-in-gaza/
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The centrality of the F-35 jets to Israel’s genocide, as well as the centrality of the UK’s contribution to the F-35 programme, helps us contextualise the Foreign Secretary’s claim that the UK sends just 1 percent of Israel’s military equipment. Fallon testified that the 1 percent is “a critical part of the jets that are being used to drop bombs. So, 1 percent doesn’t even begin to cover the percentage of impact that these parts have.” This points to how the government invoked percentages to downplay Britain’s role in Israel’s genocide. [119]
Rami Khayal, of the Palestinian Youth Movement, presented evidence from a report that was published in partnership with Workers for a Free Palestine and Progressive International. Using data from the Israeli Tax Authority (ITA), the report documented British arms exports to Israel covering a period from October 2023 to March 2025. During this period, Britain sent to Israel thousands of military goods that are defined as arms and ammunition. The report found that most of these shipments occurred after the announcement of the partial suspension.
The data shows that Britain has sent 8,630 separate munitions since the suspension took effect. The munitions fall under a category of import labelled “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and similar munitions of war and parts thereof.” In addition to weapons and ammunition, evidence shows six shipments of 299 items, which the Israeli Tax Authority identifies as tanks and other armored fighting vehicles. Rami Khayal told the Tribunal that this contradicted David Lammy’s statement in Parliament that “much of what we send [to Israel] is defensive in nature. It is not what we describe routinely as arms.”
Relating to F-35s, Khayal explained that, since the majority of military export licenses (issued over at least the past five years) have been aircraft parts, we would have expected an observable decrease following the license suspension in September 2024. However, the report found an increase in the number of shipments following the suspension. The report was also able to identify the established pattern of the use of courier shipments for small shipments of F-35 spare parts. The report recorded findings that “this pattern continued after September 2024 and was ongoing as of March 2025. As Khayal noted, the report did not confirm that these shipments contained F-35 parts. Khayal demanded a full investigation of these shipments and called on the British government to release transparent and complete licensing and export data to clarify the nature of these goods. [120]
(Notes)
[119] Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine, Progressive International, “Exposing UK Arms Exports to Israel”, May 7, 2025, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/664aed65d320123f2b3ab647/t/681b13a2197d634a11d746c0/1746604963269/REPORT ExposingUKArmsExportsToIsrael-05072025.pdf
[120] Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine, Progressive International, “Exposing UK Arms Exports to Israel”
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1.3 Legal Assessment
Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe, a lawyer at Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), outlined the legal case taken by Al-Haq and GLAN against the UK government. Al-Haq began preparing its case in October 2023, and it gained prominence from September 2024 when the government was forced to defend its F-35 exemption. Al-Haq’s legal challenge was heard in the High Court in May 2025 but was unsuccessful.
1.3.1 Government Methodology
“I want to begin,” Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe said, “by saying that it’s been really quite shocking to observe how far this government is willing to create legal absurdities to defy logic… to employ every tool at its disposal in order to keep arming Israel.”
Andrews-Briscoe outlined the UK’s strategic export licensing criteria, which state that licenses must be refused if there exists a clear risk that the item might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law. The criteria also stipulate that the government must not grant a license if to do so would be inconsistent with the UK’s obligations as a contracting party of the Genocide Convention.
One of the ways the government has been abdicating its legal [120] Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine, Progressive International, “Exposing UK Arms Exports to Israel” responsibilities, Andrews-Briscoe explained, is by adopting a skewed methodology for assessing violations of IHL. Instead of looking at incidents and patterns of attacks, the government restricts itself to conducting an incident-by-incident assessment. Put differently, it assesses whether a particular strike on a hospital was lawful, for example, but refuses to assess the lawfulness of the decimation of the whole healthcare system.
Moreover, the government could conclude that the incidents it assessed were lawful because it based its analysis on evidence provided by Israel, the party that allegedly perpetrated the crime. Indeed, the government decided that it could only make assessments of IHL violations based on information supplied by Israel, a self-imposed requirement Al-Haq described as “wholly unnecessary” given the extensive amount of evidence of atrocity crimes gathered by a wide array of actors, including video footage and statements of clear genocidal intent by Israeli officials. In addition, when Israel declined to supply information about specific allegations of egregious violations of international law, the government concluded that this refusal was reasonable. This set in motion what Andrews-Briscoe describes as “circular reasoning,” which saw the government repeatedly give the perpetrator of atrocities the opportunity not to incriminate themselves.
Dr. Gearóid Ó Cuinn, founding director at GLAN, bolstered the claims made by his colleague. He said that the UK government had:
1.Chosen to ignore blatant IHL violations, even claiming it has seen no evidence of deliberate targeting of women and children.
2.Withheld critical evidence, including a document on Israeli snipers killing children.
3.Used an unfit methodology to assess Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law and mobilised this methodology to make a determination that genocide is not occurring in Gaza.
These actions, Ó Cuinn concluded, “provided superficial legal cover for UK weapons exports but also broader co-operation with Israel.”
These testimonies were backed up by Richard Burgon MP, who questioned The Gaza 70 Tribunal government about its assessments of IHL violations. Burgon read the response he received from the minister responsible, Hamish Falconer MP:
We have not been able to reach a determination in relation to the conduct of hostilities due to the lack of sufficient verifiable evidence.
To determine a possible breach in this area requires access to sensitive specific information related to individual incidents such as the intended targets, anticipated military advantage and anticipated civilian harm which is often not available to us.
Burgon then rhetorically asked the Tribunal, “Why are we asking a state whose leader and defense minister were charged with war crimes to provide evidence about strikes that could constitute war crimes?”
1.3.2 Assessment: Before September 2024
Andrews-Briscoe detailed the perverse consequences of the British government’s methodology for assessing breaches of IHL. By September 2024, the last time Al-Haq and GLAN had disclosure in their case, the UK government had examined just 413 incidents of over 10,000 air strikes in Gaza. Of those 413 incidents, it found only one possible violation of IHL: the World Central Kitchen attack that killed foreign aid workers, including a British citizen, in April 2024. Scores of crimes against Palestinians, however, did not qualify as breaches of IHL in the eyes of the British government. That includes, but is not limited to, the sniping and killing of a grandmother as she walked with her grandson holding his hand waving a white flag; the execution of Palestinians in their hospital beds by Israeli forces disguised as healthcare workers; the whole-scale flattening of bakeries. [121]
Andrews-Briscoe summarised: for the first eleven months of the genocide, the UK government assessed that there was no clear risk that UK weapons might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of IHL, and this assessment was used to justify why it did not have reservations about dramatically increasing weapons transfers to Israel after October 2023.
(Notes)
[121] Middle East Eye, “What happened to the boy who saw his grandmother killed while waving a white flag?”, October 6, 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/what-happened-boy-who-saw-his-grandmother-killed-while-waving-white-flag ; Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “Israel’s execution of three Palestinians – one of whom was injured – in hospital is a double crime”, January 30, 2024, https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6129 ; Reuters, “Bakeries smashed in Israel bombardment key to Gaza hunger crisis”, February 28, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/bakeries-smashed-israel-bombardment-key-gaza-hunger-crisis-2024-02-28/
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1.3.3 Assessment: After September 2024
The UK government announced a partial arms suspension in September 2024, when it finally reached the assessment that the clear risk threshold had been met. Despite this assessment, the government still departed from its own domestic rules in order to create its legal carveout for the continuation of F-35 parts, which comprised over ninety percent of the arms trade at the time.
Fallon emphasised again the importance of the government’s admission that it must not grant a license if it determines that there is a clear risk that items might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of IHL. By describing the continuation of the F-35 programme as a “carve-out,” they are describing —or admitting—an exemption to their own criteria. That is, then Foreign Secretary David Lammy accepted the fact that F-35 jets were being used in violation of IHL, but that his government was not prepared to halt the supply of F-35 parts that could end up in Israel. Describing this as “unprecedented,” Fallon said “nothing like this has ever happened before where there’s an admission that the legal threshold has been reached and then a complete departure from it.”
The UK government offered several—often inconsistent—explanations for why the exemption of F-35 parts was necessary. Principally, it argued that the carve out was necessary because removing the British government from the F-35 programme would undermine international peace and security. In several statements, the government cited a “supply-chain” issue as justification. The government repeatedly claimed that it could not withdraw from the F-35 programme, because such a suspension would undermine “the global F-35 supply chain that is vital for the security of the UK, our allies, and NATO.”
As part of this justification, the government claimed that it was not possible to trace the destination of F-35 parts nor, therefore, prevent them from ending up in Israel.
Fallon raised considerable doubt over this claim. As she explained, parts must be tracked in the event they are found to be faulty, so the claim that The Gaza 72 Tribunal these parts cannot be tracked is not credible. The real reason for the exemption of F-35 parts is the lack of political will to confront the United States over the fulfilment of actionable legal duties, namely, the British government’s obligation to prevent these parts from ending up in Israel. Al Haq’s case against the government’s carveout was simple: these continued transfers were inconsistent with the government’s duty to prevent genocide. The key question in the litigation was whether the government had assessed the risk of genocide. Crucially, as Al-Haq reported, the government had in fact made an assessment under the genocide convention, despite denying having done so in Parliament, and their conclusion was that there was no serious risk of genocide.
Andrews-Briscoe listed a host of other steps the government took to “frustrate the rule of law and prevent their co-operation with Israel from being properly scrutinised,” including its failure to disclose all material facts (otherwise known as a duty of candour) and an attempt to delay the proceedings at every possible juncture.
1.4 Treatment of Whistle-Blowers Who Exposed Cultures of Deception
The evidence offered by Fallon and Andrews-Briscoe provides crucial context for testimonies from people in the Foreign Office when the legal assessments were being made. We heard from Mark Smith, a British Foreign Office official who resigned in protest over continued arms sales to Israel in August 2024. Smith was the former lead on the IHL update at the time of the invasion of Gaza.
Smith’s role was to gather all relevant information on the situation, including the air strikes, the precision of the strikes and civilian casualties. His assessment was clear: “it was impossible to see how the UK government was acting legally.” However, his assessments were repeatedly ignored or downplayed, an experience he described as “profoundly concerning.” Smith said that he “could not understand how the team were justifying [the licensing], because it was very clear that Israel was in breach of IHL and even committing war crimes.”
His testimony indicates the intentionality behind the reports alterations:
“What I witnessed while working on that report was profoundly concerning. While I was working on the report, I was routinely asked to change the report. This was not to correct mistakes or to ensure accuracy, as would normally be the case with a civil service report, but I was actually asked to alter the wording and placement of paragraphs and to omit key information so that it—quote unquote—sounded less bad. This is absolutely counter to what we are trained to do as civil servants, and it’s something that I have never witnessed in my career.
Those sections that I’d written which talked about civilian casualties, for example, I was asked to kind of play them down, make them smaller, put them towards the end of the report… I was very very, very troubled by this and I raised it at the time… We were told to delay the submission of the report until we could find something more positive to add. So this would often happen when there was a particularly appalling example of civilian death. There would be this… panic in the department, and we would… try to get the government in question to give us some kind of assurance that there was, let’s say, an investigation going to be happening into the incident, and then we could put the investigation and all of that front and center of the report to make it look like something good was kind of happening. So, we would delay the report until we could find something positive to put in it… Everyone wanted to make it look as though we were on the right side of the law. And any kind of suggestion that maybe we weren’t, tended to be met with this kind of panic and a kind of extreme pressure to not talk about that.”
Characterising the department’s culture as one of panic and denial, Smith revealed that “there have been hundreds if not thousands of conversations on the most controversial aspects of our arms sales policy, which will never be seen by the public.” Smith described the system as “completely unfit for purpose,” saying, “there’s no oversight. There’s no independent governance. It’s all left up to civil servants under immense pressure from ministers.” He also described members being asked to not voice their concerns in writing, ostensibly due to fear that information about wrongdoing would be leaked. He described how he and other colleagues made several attempts to the whistleblowing team but were ignored. “The only choice I had was to resign.”
Smith was not the only staff member to express concerns about UK government policy. We also heard from Fran Heathcote, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents around 190,000 members working mainly within the civil service and related areas. It represents members who work in the Foreign Office, Home Office, Ministry of Defence and Department of Business and Trade. PCS exists to protect the interests of its members, which includes stepping in when its members are asked to perform functions that can put them at risk of violating the law. “We don’t believe,” Heathcote explained “that it is in the interests of our members to be placed in situations where they are potentially being asked to act in breach of the law.” PCS has raised concerns about the legality of the work being undertaken within government ministries and departments, which involves ostensibly illegal arms trade and other interactions with the government of Israel. Specifically, that includes the government’s decision to continue to approve arms export licenses to Israel and to continue negotiations on a free trade agreement. [122]
On the May 16, 2025, 310 staff in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) wrote to the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, raising a range of concerns and calling for substantive and tangible actions to address them. Those concerns included Israel’s violations of IHL and potential UK government complicity with these violations. The letter called on the foreign secretary to urgently consider with the utmost seriousness those recommendations. Heathcote describes the response from the government as “nothing short of a disgrace.” The government’s response was to offer FCDO staff conversations with HR and counsellors with suggestions that civil servants may wish to resign if they’re uncomfortable with what they’re being asked to do. Heathcote describes this as “a dereliction of duty and a startling ignorance of the provisions of the civil service code which require all civil servants to act in accordance with the law including international law.”
1.5 Doubts Over Partial Suspension of Shipments
According to the report referenced in Rami Khayal’s testimony, the UK continued to send Israel thousands of military items despite the export ban.
Since September 2024, 8,630 items were exported under the category “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and similar munitions of war and parts thereof – other.” [123] In addition, four shipments were made under a customs code identified as “tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, motorised, whether or not fitted with weapons, and parts of such vehicles.”
The data also suggests that monthly shipments of aircraft parts from the UK to Israel remained steady, despite the government’s claim that it had stopped the direct export of F-35 parts to Israel. The report cited above claims that “these parts can and do ultimately end up in Israeli F-35s.”[John McEvoy from Declassified UK also concluded that it was highly unlikely that the ban on direct exports of F-35 parts to Israel made a significant impact on the supply chain of F-35 parts from Britain to Israel. Firstly, shipping documents obtained by Declassified UK indicated that around 90 percent of all F-35 exports from Britain are sent directly to the US where they can be exported onward to Israel. [124]
A second doubt arises in relation to the government’s decision to exempt components for trainer aircraft from its license suspensions. They were exempted on the grounds that they were not for use in the current conflict in Gaza. However, Israeli pilots rely on UK-made parts to learn to fly the fighter jets, which were used in the destruction and genocide of Gaza. Shipping documents have revealed how an aerospace firm in Wolverhampton sent at least ten shipments of M346 Lavy components to Israel since December 2024. The M346 Lavy is a high-performance aircraft designed to train pilots to fly advanced fighter jets, including the F-16 and the F-35.
Thirdly, an engineering firm in County Durham, Permoid, has sent over 1,000 ammunition containers to Israel since October 2023. Around 300 of those containers were exported in April 2025. Most of these containers were sent to an Elbit systems factory near Tel Aviv, which produces mortar shells for the IDF. As McEvoy stated, “the UK government would seemingly have us believe that facilitating the supply of ammunition containers, but not the ammunition itself, is a morally justifiable and legally tenable position.”
(Notes)
[122] United Nations Association, Coventry Branch. “310 Civil Servants ‘Longstanding Concern’ with UK Gaza Policy,” June 10, 2025, https://unacov.uk/310-civil-servants-longstanding-concern-with-uk-gaza-policy/
[123] Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine, Progressive International, “Exposing UK Arms Exports to Israel”: 1
[124] Ibid: 11
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Fourthly, McEvoy uncovered an otherwise neglected aspect of arms supplies: the transfer of parts. Even after the September arms restrictions, reports indicate that F-35 parts bound for Israel were allowed to be shipped through London Stansted airport. Inquiries to the Foreign Office about how this was allowed to happen remain unanswered. [125]
2. British Bases
British air bases are a crucial element of Britain’s role in Israel’s military operation in Gaza. This section covers the use of these bases as staging posts for military operations, facilitating the transport, refuelling and maintenance of military equipment and the performance of surveillance flights over Gaza.
Throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the UK government has remained tight-lipped about the role of British military bases. When the prime minister visited RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus in December 2024, he told troops: “Quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about all of the time… We can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing.” A recent report by the British Palestinian Committee said that the UK Government is “engaged in military actions without being subject to parliamentary scrutiny, and that these actions implicate its institutions and officials in the gravest breaches of international law.” [126] [127]
2.1 Arms Supplies
Matt Kennard from Declassified UK described RAF Akrotiri as “the central international site for supporting and supplying Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” By studying flight tracking websites, Kennard could see that RAF planes were carrying out nearly daily missions.
As Kennard outlined, these flights serve several functions. RAF bases were home to huge military transport vehicles, capable of carrying tanks, helicopters, and all sorts of weaponry and personnel. “To this day,” Kennard says, “we do not know what was on those planes.” It is highly likely that military cargo has been airlifted from RAF Akrotiri to Israel. That cargo has often travelled to Cyprus from US military bases in other parts of Europe. [128]
On October 27, 2023, it was reported that the SAS, highly secretive special forces, had been deployed to Cyprus. The next day, the UK military sent out a D-Notice, a censorship order sent out by the UK military and intelligence services to the media.
Since that day, Kennard informed the Tribunal, we have had no information about what UK special forces have been doing in Israel and potentially in Gaza.
(Notes)
[125] John McEvoy, “Fighter Jet Parts Sent Through UK Airport to Israel”, Declassified, June 18, 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/fighter-jet-parts sent-through-uk-airport-to-israel/
[126] Transcript from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s address to British troops at RAF Akrotiri, December 10, 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-address-to-british-troops-in-raf-akrotiri-cyprus-10-december-2024
[127] British Palestinian Committee, “British Military Collaboration with Israel”, January, 2025: 20, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/611a64c35baa3f33556d5454/t/6798b1604694e819057b4184/1738060146895/British+Military+Collaboration+Report
[128] Matt Kennard, “Britain secretly sent 500 extra troops to Cyprus base being used to supply weapons to Israel”, Declassified UK, December 12, 2023. https://www.declassifieduk.org/britain-secretly-sent-500-extra-troops-to-cyprus-base-being-used-to-supply-weapons-to-israel/
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2.2 Refuelling
Kennard revealed that Israeli Air Force planes had been landing in Britain since October 2023. Their take-offs and landings are not registered on any commercial flight-tracking websites but can be tracked through transponder data. With this data, we can see that Israeli Air Force planes, which were refuelling fighter jets over Gaza, were landing in RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on the way to the United States and back again.
2.3 Surveillance Flights The RAF has conducted regular surveillance flights over Gaza and has passed this intelligence to Israel.
Kennard explained that there had been over 600 surveillance flights by the RAF between December 2023 and September 2025. Kennard explained how RAF flights would typically turn their transponders off as they were flying over the sea so that, in the words of Kennard and Farooq, “so activity over Gaza stayed secret.” [129]
(Notes)
[129] Matt Kennard and Abdulla Farooq, “Gaza Spy Flights From UK Base On Cyprus Secretly Shift to Plane Leased by Company with Billions in US Military Contracts,” Internationalist 360, August 4, 2025, https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/08/04/gaza-spy-flights-from-uk-base-on-cyprus-secretly shift-to-plane-leased-by-company-with-billions-in-us-military-contracts/
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However, on July 28, 2025, a privately contracted flight had mistakenly forgotten to turn off the transponder, enabling Kennard to see that these flights would circle an area of interest in Khan Yunis (an area of intense military activity) for three to four hours. Israeli airstrikes were reported in the same area the following day. This example raises a crucial, wider question that has remained unanswered: has intelligence collected by the UK been used to justify or support airstrikes that have breached international law? [130]
What we do know is that the IDF has cited hostage rescue as an excuse for the indiscriminate mass slaughter of Palestinians and a range of other egregious violations of IHL. In the UK’s case, hostage rescue has been used as a justification to provide Israel with military assistance in the genocide. Under the Geneva Conventions and the Arms Trade Treaty—both of which Britain has signed—there is a legal obligation to ensure that any military support does not contribute to violations of IHL. We do not know what this intelligence has been used for, which has generated grave concern that Britain could be complicit in actions that breach international law.
The UK is not in control of how its intelligence is used once it is sent to Israel. “If you’re sending this information to the Israeli military in real time,” Kennard says, “how can you then say, ‘Well, we only want you to use it for hostage rescue’? Once it’s in Israel’s hands, they can use it for whatever they want.” An anonymous Israeli official added that Britain had “been able to provide intelligence from the air and cyberspace that Israel cannot collect on its own.” [131]
Matt Kennard’s evidence was backed up by Professor Nicos Trimikliniotis, a professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus. Trimikliniotis describes these RAF bases as “infrastructures to conduct activities which may aid Israeli war crimes.” One of the most significant implications of these surveillance flights is that the UK government is in possession of information relevant to its assessment of war crimes. As Kennard told the Tribunal, “They have one of the greatest databases of genocide in recent history.” Despite this, the government refuses to use this footage in its assessment of IHL violations.
(Notes)
[130] Ibid
[131] Matt Kennard, “The British spy squad assisting Israel as it bombs Gaza”, Declassified UK, June 11, 2024, spy-squad-assisting-israel-as-it-bombs-gaza/ The Gaza https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-british
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One such IHL violation was the killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers. The Tribunal heard from Forz Khan, the lawyer of the parents of James Henderson, a British aid worker killed by Israel. Khan outlined that the “murder” is very likely to have been recorded by one of these surveillance flights. Khan has asked for the footage, but it has not been shared with him or the family. “We’ve been told there was a flight,” Khan testified, “but [the UK government] refused to answer anything further.” Khan is confident that the footage exists. “The fact that you say there is something, but we can’t show you,” Khan said, “leads us and indeed leads any reasonable person to the irresistible inference that there is something to be seen there.” Summarising evidence from previous witnesses, Khan was in no doubt that “Britain had countenanced Israel’s actions in many, many ways and that includes when there’s been murder of British citizens in occupied Palestinian territories.”
3. Political and Diplomatic Support
Long before the start of the genocide, Britain has provided Israel with not only the military means for carrying out its atrocities, but also with the political and diplomatic support it has relied on to act with impunity. This support is summarised neatly by one of the Tribunal’s witnesses, Sara Husseini, Director of the British Palestinian Committee. “Ongoing diplomatic support for Israel,” she says, has entailed “justifications for atrocities being committed, dehumanisation of Palestinians in political rhetoric, efforts to undermine Palestinian attempts at accountability [and] the demonisation of international solidarity.”
3.1 Political Rhetoric
Husseini cites the persistent invocation by the British government of “the self-defence rhetoric invoked by an occupying power against an occupied people.” The most egregious example she cites is that of Keir Starmer’s infamous endorsement of Israel’s right to cut off food and water to the entire population of Gaza. This was part of a much wider (and consistent) package of political support that both the Conservative and Labour governments gave to Israel. We should not underestimate the significance of this support, which helped Israel accrue both the confidence and the political capital it needed to The Gaza 80 Tribunal execute its operations with impunity. Equipped with the backing of Western governments, Israel was able routinely to deploy the language of self defence to justify its crimes. As Jeremy Corbyn wrote in an article in October 2023:
Both the Foreign Secretary and Shadow Foreign Secretary have reiterated their support for Israel’s “right to defend itself”, yet consistently fail to offer sufficient specificity about what this means, let alone how it should be exercised within the boundaries of international law… We may be witnessing the beginning of the total annihilation of Gaza and its people. This is not a battle between one state and another. It is couched as an Israeli response to a non-state actor, but in fact it is a response to Palestinian people wherever they are. What is unfolding is not a conflict of equals, but the systematic starvation, subjugation and destruction of an unarmed civilian population. I wonder, if Gaza is wiped off the face of the earth, whether our politicians will look back and reflect on the reality of their unwavering support. If they had any integrity, they would mourn the innocent Palestinian lives that have been erased in the name of self defence. They should be ashamed of their cowardice, knowing that others will pay the price for the war crimes they refuse to oppose. [132]
We also heard from Richard Falk, who served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, and is currently the chair of the board of trustees at the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Falk spoke on behalf of the “Gaza People’s Tribunal,” which was holding its final session the following month at Istanbul University.
Falk drew a distinction between diplomatic support and “diplomatic complicity.” He said that examples of diplomatic complicity were acts of “treating Israel as a normal state,” “the failure to condemn Israel for what it has been doing,” and the failure to “take concrete steps in light of that condemnation.” Falk told the Tribunal that Israel should be (and should have been) suspended from the United Nations: “As long as Israel can have the legitimacy of a sovereign member of the UN without being suspended for its non-compliance with UN directives, there is no effective means to curtail its policies.”
(Notes)
[132] Jeremy Corbyn, “Jeremy Corbyn: ‘I Condemn Violence Against All Civilians, Why Can’t Keir Starmer?’” Tribune, October 12, 2023, https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/10/jeremy-corbyn-i-condemn-violence-against-all-civilians-why-cant-keir-starmer
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3.2 The ICC Case
On May 20, 2024, ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced his intention to file applications for arrest warrants against Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh and Israeli leaders Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. On November 21, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Mohammed Deif. “With regard to the crimes, the [Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber] found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Netanyahu… and Mr. Gallant… bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
Tayab Ali, the Director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), claimed in his testimony that Britain had not just failed in its obligations to support the ICC, but actively “undermined” the court by questioning its jurisdiction, withholding support for arrest warrants and failing to facilitate investigations. This applies to both Conservative and Labour governments. In June 2024, the Conservative government challenged the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israeli nationals. The challenge was unsuccessful, but it resulted in the delay of arrest warrants. Ali also drew attention to a report by Middle East Eye showing that David Cameron, while he was Foreign Secretary under the Conservative government, “directly threatened the prosecutor in relation to the Palestine investigation” which, if proven “would amount to direct state interference in judicial independence, a flagrant breach of Britain’s obligations under the Rome Statute.”
Ali criticised the UK Labour government for failing to show any “formal or unofficial” support for the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, who is a British citizen, as he was coming under unprecedented attack and sanctions by the United States. “By failing to defend the prosecutor, condemn sanctions, or shield the court from interference,” Ali said, “Britain has not only betrayed the victims of Gaza, but actively undermined the very institution designed to deliver justice.” Former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Guillaume Long outlined the ways in which the UK had “chosen political convenience over legal obligations.” He highlighted the requirements of the ICC arrest warrants and the prevention of genocide. Principally, he drew attention to the UK’s refusal to exercise its universal jurisdiction powers to initiate a domestic investigation or prosecution into war crimes in Gaza. This complements Kennard’s evidence regarding a lack of transparency about whether intelligence collected by British surveillance aircraft has been shared with Israel and not the ICC.
3.3 The ICJ Case
Sara Husseini of the British Palestinian Committee explained how government ministers have consistently refused to support the South African submission at the ICJ in its case against Israel, and did not change its policies after the January 2024 court ruling that it was plausible that Israel was committing genocide. This ruling put into motion a series of obligations on the British government to prevent genocide.
Husseini also highlighted the UK’s response to the ICJ July 2024 ruling that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was illegal. Part Two laid out the implications this ruling had for Britain’s legal obligations and its duty to not assist Israel’s unlawful presence. Husseini stressed that the UK has yet to formally admit that Israel’s laws, policies, and practices meet the legal definition of apartheid, let alone “take the appropriate and effective action to remedy this crime.” It is worth noting that even before the ICJ ruling was made, the United Kingdom asked the court to reject the request for any such advisory opinion to be made, submitting a written statement on July 20, 2023 that read: “The United Kingdom invites the Court to exercise its discretion and decline to respond to the Request.”
(Notes)
[133] International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, July 20, 2023, para. 5, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20230725-wri-15-00-en.pdf
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3.4 Palestinian Statehood
Husseini also drew attention to the prime minister’s statement on July 29, 2025 regarding the conditional recognition of the state of Palestine in September, unless Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza, resumed humanitarian aid, and refrained from further annexations in the West Bank. According to Husseini, this “symbolic and conditional recognition” was not just insufficient in the context of an ongoing genocide, it also did nothing to safeguard the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and actively undermined international law “by casting the right to self determination and the illegality of the occupation as negotiable.” The prime minister’s statement was typical of the government’s “performative and cynical attempt to diffuse the pressure [it had] been facing in its role in Gaza” and to frame Palestinian basic rights as if they were a privilege that could be given or taken at the whim of those in power.
3.5 Hosting and Training Israeli Officers
John McEvoy shared Declassified UK’s discovery that Israeli army officers have been allowed to train in Britain at the prestigious Royal College of Defense Studies (RCDS) since 2023.
The UK government has also welcomed several high-ranking Israeli officers to Britain since October 2023, providing them with special diplomatic immunity to protect them from private arrest applications under universal jurisdiction legislation. That list includes Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi (the IDF’s then Chief of the General Staff, who had been directing the Israeli military’s operations throughout the Gaza genocide), Major General Oded Bassiuk (head of the Israeli military’s operations directorate), and Major General Tomer Bar (the commander of the Israeli Air Force). These visits were intended to occur in secrecy, and there are presumably other Israeli military officers who have visited the UK.
3.6 Assessments of Genocide
This report has outlined the legal case that was brought against the government regarding its duties to prevent genocide. Repeatedly, the government claimed it could not determine whether there was a risk of genocide because “the UK’s long-standing policy is that any formal determination as to whether genocide has occurred is a matter for a competent national or international court rather than for governments or non judicial bodies; it should be decided after consideration of all the evidence available in the context of a credible judicial process.” As Richard Burgon MP explained, this undermines the government’s duty under the Genocide Act to proactively prevent genocide, characterising the government’s position on this matter as an example of “political complicity.” So too is the refusal to publish any legal advice. Burgon points to blatant double standards regarding the UK’s assessment of war crimes in Gaza compared to war crimes in Russia. He recalled how, in one parliamentary session, a government minister maintained that it is only for the courts to decide whether war crimes have taken place, and in a subsequent statement to the House, the same minister would have little trouble proclaiming that Russia has committed war crimes.
3.7 Silencing Palestinian and Pro-Palestinian Voices
[134] Husseini underscored the significance of government policy, particularly during Labour’s tenure, that severely restricted peaceful protests and expressions of solidarity, including proscribing the civil disobedience group Palestine Action. The result, as she summarises, is that “demonstrators now potentially face years in prison for protesting this country’s involvement in the mass murder of women, men, and children.” Moreover, the government has “remained silent” as students and employees have faced disciplinary action and even policy intervention for participating in peaceful demonstrations for Palestine. Husseini’s remarks have been reiterated by UN experts who urged the “United Kingdom not to misuse terrorism laws against protest group Palestine Action.” In August 2023, it was reported that Israeli embassy officials attempted to pressure the Attorney General’s office to intervene in UK court cases relating to the prosecution of protesters. In February 2026, the High Court ruled that the government’s proscription of Palestine Action was “disproportionate and unlawful. [135]
(Notes)
[134] United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “UN Experts Urge United Kingdom Not To Misuse Terrorism Laws against Protest Group Palestine Action,” July 1, 2025, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/un-experts-urge-united-kingdom-not-misuse-terrorism laws-against-protest
[135] Dominic Casciani, “Palestine Action Ban Ruled Unlawful but Group Remains Proscribed for Now,” BBC News, February 13, 2026 , https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3wleezq73no
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3.8 Visa Schemes
Husseini described British foreign policy as being characterised by “entrenched structural racism against Palestinians in the UK.” Evidencing a prime example of this anti-Palestinian racism, Husseini criticised the government for its refusal to set up a family visa scheme for Palestinians in Gaza, based on the Ukrainian model, despite cross-party support and more than 100,000 signatures to a parliamentary petition. This preceded the government’s decision to suspend refugee family reunions altogether, the only legal route for spouses and children to join their loved ones.
4. Economic Support
Israel would not have been able to carry out its genocide against the Palestinian people without continued economic support from countries and corporations around the world. As Ben Jamal, Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: “this system of oppression could not [have been] and has not been sustained without the complicit active support of Western governments, public bodies, companies, and corporations.” This is further detailed in Francesca Albanese’s recent report on corporate complicity “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide.” Our Tribunal heard from several experts who outlined the breadth and variety of the British government’s economic support for Israel’s actions. [136]
4.1 Lack of Sanctions
Richard Burgon MP has consistently called for the UK government to ban all trade in goods and services with illegal Israeli settlements and impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes on all individuals and entities complicit in Israel’s occupation, in adherence with international law. “The government should have been using every single tool at its disposal, from sanctions to using its role in the UN and elsewhere, to force— not plead—with Israel to stop,” Burgon said.
(Notes)
[136] Francesca Albanese, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, UN Doc. A/HRC/59/23, July 2, 2025
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Regarding sanctions, Burgon drew particular attention to the UK’s double standards toward Russia, where the government has sanctioned over 2,500 individuals, entities, and ships under the Russia sanctions regime, over 2,300 of which have been sanctioned since Putin’s full scale invasion. By contrast, with respect to Israel, the government has ordered sanctions against two far-right ministers and some extreme settlers and settler bodies. It is worth noting that these actions were taken largely in response to Israeli activity in the West Bank, rather than Gaza.
Husseini highlighted the government’s eventual announcement of the suspension of trade negotiations with Israel in May 2025, underscoring that this suspension was “limited and temporary.” The government’s approach was made apparent by the fact that, just a week later, it sent a trade envoy to Israel, who announced on social media that he was in Israel to “promote trade with the UK.” [137]
Burgon concluded that the government’s failure to take these actions was proof of economic and political complicity. This was echoed by Husseini, who said that “without any kind of economic or diplomatic sanctions, Israel will never be compelled to abide by its international obligations as set out in the ICJ advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s prolonged occupation.”
4.2 Humanitarian Aid
Economic support to Israel has flowed over the past two and a half years. By contrast, humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians has been blocked. The UK government failed in its obligations to ensure urgent humanitarian aid could reach Gaza in several ways.
First, the UK government has given political support to Israel as it wilfully cut off humanitarian aid. On October 18, 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu stated: “We will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip.” [138]
(Notes)
[137] Patrick Wintour, “UK Accused of ‘Garbled Messaging’ as Trade Envoy Visits Israel to Boost Links,” The Guardian, May 28, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/may/28/uk-trade-envoy-lord-austin-visit-israel-talks-suspended-sparks-criticism
[138] Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Statement, 18 October 2023.” Gov.il. https://www.gov.il/en/pages/pm-netanyahu statement-18-oct-2023
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In response to the clearly articulated intention to commit acts of grave violation of international law, Britain maintained a position of “unequivocally backing Israel’s right to defend itself. [139] Notably, Keir Starmer, the Labour party leader at the time, publicly stated that Israel has the right to cut water and electricity off to the besieged population of Gaza. [140]
Second, Husseini condemned the Conservative government’s appalling decision to suspend support for UNRWA at a time when Palestinians needed their services the most. She noted that some funding was restored by the Labour government, although at lower than previous levels, despite the greatly increased need. Moreover, the British government failed to defend UNRWA from attacks and smear campaigns led by the Israeli government.
Third, Fran Heathcote of PCS drew attention to the Israeli interception of the Madleen when the British civilian ship was en route to Gaza to provide humanitarian aid. Despite the ship being protected under international maritime law, this infringement “appears to have gone unanswered by the UK government.”
(Notes)
[139] Parallel Parliament, “Israel and Gaza: Rishi Sunak Excerpts,” October 16, 2023, https://parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/rishi-sunak/debate/2023-1016/commons/commons-chamber/israel-and-gaza
[140] MEE Staff, “Israel-Palestine War: Keir Starmer Supports Israel’s ‘Right’ to Cut Gaza’s Water and Power,” Middle East Eye, October 11, 2023, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-keir-starmer-criticised-right-cut-gaza-water-power
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“The UK is a participant in Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people.”
DR GEARÓID Ó CUINN
Part IV: Has Britain fulfilled its legal obligations?
Part Four attempts to answer the Tribunal’s central question: Has Britain fulfilled its legal obligations? To answer this question, we rely primarily on evidence given by Dr. Raz Segal (an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies), Francesca Albanese (UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories) and Tayab Ali (Director of International Centre of Justice for Palestinians). Their testimonies rely in part on evidence provided in Parts One and Three, and correspond to the five specific legal obligations laid out in Part Two.
1. Britain’s failure to meet its obligations
Obligation 1:
The immediate suspension of arms transfers and related military exports where there is a serious risk of use in genocide, crimes against humanity or grave IHL violations
and
Obligation 2: The suspension of intelligence sharing, training and other security co operation that could materially assist unlawful acts
Conclusion: Failure
There was widespread consensus across the Tribunal that what has happened in Gaza constitutes a genocide. This includes the largest professional association in the field, the International Association of Genocide Scholars. For the purposes of determining Britain’s legal obligations, however, we need not prove that genocide has taken place. That is because Britain has a legal obligation to prevent genocide when there is a plausible risk of genocide taking place. As Dr. Raz Segal explained, the Genocide Convention is activated “not only when there’s clearly genocide but when there’s a clear risk of genocide.” During the Tribunal, there was unanimous consensus that this threshold of risk had been reached.
Both Francesca Albanese and Tayab Ali cited the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures in January 2024, in the case brought against Israel by South Africa. The ICJ found that allegations of genocide in Gaza were plausible and ordered Israel to take specific actions in order to prevent irreparable harm to the Palestinian people. These risks should not be downplayed. “The only reason a court issues provisional orders is if it’s trying to prevent something”, Tayab Ali said, “and it only tries to prevent something if it thinks something is going to happen or is happening or is likely to happen.”
The ICJ ruling did not just highlight Israel’s obligations under international law, but has clear implications for third-party states, including the UK. “At that precise moment,” Ali said, “every state, including Britain, had a binding duty to prevent genocide.” This duty “arises the instant a state knows or should know of a serious risk.”
This was echoed by Dr. Gearóid Ó Cuinn, of GLAN. “There is a legal consensus that the UK’s duty to prevent genocide was crystallised [following the January 2024 ICJ ruling] in respect of Israel’s offensive in Gaza,” he said. “This duty requires the UK to take all reasonably available measures within its power which might contribute to the prevention of genocide.” This duty to prevent was described as “the beating heart of the Genocide Convention, the legal expression of ‘never again.’”
Specifically, that duty requires states to abstain from providing military, financial, political or diplomatic support. Or, as Ó Cuinn described, “the undertaking of a root and branch audit of the UK’s relationship with Israel across multiple fronts, diplomatic, military, and economic, to identify where there was potential complicity or leverage that could be addressed to prevent genocide.”
Referring to evidence relating to GLAN’s legal case against the government (described in Part Three), Ó Cui characterised this duty as a “fundamental” obligation that “should not be superseded by contractual obligations with US weapons manufacturers who are producing Israel’s war plane of choice.” Following the January 2024 ICJ ruling indicating that it was plausible that The Gaza 91 Tribunal Israel was carrying out genocide, the government failed to provide clear guidelines on how it intended to meet its obligations to prevent genocide and failed to fulfill those obligations to prevent genocide. By maintaining trade, intelligence, and military co-operation with Israel, Britain has failed in its duty to prevent genocide. Ó Cuinn stated that this continued co-operation was “indicative of a government that is not compliant with the UK’s legal obligations, especially the duty to prevent genocide.”
The British government did not just fail in its legal obligations relating to the prevention of genocide. It shielded itself from accountability from those trying to make the government comply with these legal obligations. Ó Cuinn called this an “accountability gap” with respect to complicity and Israeli atrocities. He outlined three tactics that “have been intentionally deployed in both settings to create a merry-go-round of delay and inaction which facilitates genocide by keeping Israeli war planes supplied and UK Israeli co-operation free from scrutiny.” He asserted that these tactics have “deepened the complicity of the UK in Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people” in several ways.
Firstly, ministers have denied that genocide is occurring. In a letter dated September 1, 2025, the then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy stated that “the crime of genocide occurs only where there is specific ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” and that “the government has not concluded that Israel is acting with that intent.” A year earlier, in October 2024, David Lammy replied to a Conservative MP in the House of Commons, who asked “Will the Foreign Secretary take this [141] opportunity to say that there is not a genocide occurring in the Middle East?” David Lammy told Parliament that “those terms were largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crises such as Rwanda and the Holocaust of the Second World War”, adding that “the way that people are now using those terms undermines their seriousness.” His implication was clear: not enough people had died for it to constitute a genocide.
Secondly, the government has wilfully interpreted International Humanitarian Law assessments through the unduly narrow lens of arms exports shipped directly to Israel. Government ministers have repeatedly implied that the duty to prevent genocide is restricted to direct arm sales. In reality, any due diligence assessment under the Geneva Convention should include a much wider audit of all relevant UK-Israeli links to determine how the UK could contribute to preventing genocide. “The government has shown itself to be determined never to have this legal obligation materialise,” Ó Cuinn stated.
(Notes)
[141] Sky News, “Lammy: Does the UK think there’s a genocide in Gaza?”, September 9, 2025, theres-a-genocide-in-gaza-13427827 The Gaza https://news.sky.com/video/lammy-does-the-uk-think
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Thirdly, government ministers have attempted to derail attempts made by parliamentarians to ask for information on how the UK is fulfilling its duty to prevent genocide. Ó Cuinn told the Tribunal that MPs have been “misdirected” through the offer of “a stock answer that switches the focus to how a determination of genocide is made rather than the steps that the UK government has already taken”. We have already learned what this stock response is: “The UK government’s long-standing policy is that any formal determination as to whether genocide has occurred is a matter for a competent national or international court such as the International Court of Justice rather than for governments or non-judicial bodies.” In doing so, Ó Cuinn stated, the government has been “deploying a legal absurdity to sidestep requests for information on how the duty to prevent genocide is being discharged now.”
When asked about preventing genocide, the UK government’s reply is that you must wait for a court to determine that it has already occurred. Yet, as Ó Cuinn explained, “government lawyers argued the very opposite” in court, admitting that they had indeed conducted their own assessment. In May 2025, UK government lawyers said that no violation of the duty to prevent a genocide “can occur unless and until there is actually a genocide.” Lawyers claimed that while Israel’s conduct in Gaza could “in principle, satisfy the physical component of genocide,” it was unknowable whether these “actions are motivated by genocidal intent” and that “no evidence has been seen that Israel is deliberately targeting civilian women or children.” [142] [143]
The government’s repeated deflections and misdirections in Parliament have [142] happened “so frequently and consistently,” Ó Cuinn said, that “it amounts to a purposeful tactic to avoid speaking about the fact that the UK has conducted its own assessment and to avoid having to share whether the risk of genocide has been monitored and acted upon by the government.” As outlined in Part Three, this assessment relied on a highly problematic methodology—of examining specific incidents rather than Israel’s multi dimensional onslaught as a whole—to conclude that genocide was not being committed in Gaza.
(Notes)
[142] Patrick Wintour, “No Evidence of Genocide in Gaza, UK Lawyers Say in Arms Export Case,” The Guardian, May 13, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/13/no-evidence-of-genocide-in-gaza-uk-lawyers-say-in-arms-export-case
[143] Middle East Eye, “UK assessed there was ‘no serious risk’ of Israel committing genocide in Gaza”, May 13, 2025, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-assessed-there-was-no-serious-risk-israel-committing-genocide-gaza
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This created a cycle “where the court defers to Parliament and in turn the government short circuits parliamentary scrutiny.” In Parliament, the government says it’s for the courts to decide whether Israel is committing genocide, and in court, it says it’s for the government to decide. This “duplicity,” as Ó Cuinn called it, gave legal cover to the government’s assessment and allowed them to prevent the court from scrutinizing their actions.
Obligation 3:
Measures to ensure non recognition and non assistance in respect of Israel’s unlawful presence in the OPT, including review of trade and investment ties including the review of its existing trade and investment relations with Israel and Israeli entities
Conclusion: Failure
In July 2024, the ICJ published its advisory opinion that Israel’s very presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem) was illegal. The court found that, irrespective of the specific violations Israel carries out within these territories, its mere presence in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem over such an extended period violates the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid under international law and breaches the Palestinian people’s right to self determination. The court said that the occupation must be dismantled in its entirety as soon as possible. Despite having no binding force, the Court’s advisory opinions nevertheless carry great legal weight and moral authority. As Tayab Ali clarified, this is not “advice you can take or leave.” Instead, it means that the ICJ has been The Gaza 94 Tribunal asked to determine the settled position in international law about a situation. The ICJ is advising on what that position is—and it is an opinion “telling you what your obligations are.” Francesca Albanese reminded the Tribunal that the landmark opinion did not only lay out obligations for Israel, but also for third states, to “abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the occupied Palestinian territory or parts thereof” and “to take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel.” This was echoed by Dr. Ralph Wilde, a professor specialising in public international law, who outlined that “all states, including the UK, bear special legal obligations to suppress these violations” and “to take all positive steps within their power to bring Israel’s illegal presence in the OPT to an end.” This includes, he said:
1.Not to recognise the illegal presence as lawful;
2.Not to aid or assist in maintaining the illegal presence;
3.Not to recognise as valid Israel’s justifications for that presence, for example that Israel has a right to be present in the OPT on the basis of a right of self-defense;
4.To implement sanctions against Israel and Israeli individuals.
Ali reached a similar conclusion, relating to the specific duties placed upon all states:
1.Do not recognise or assist Israel’s unlawful presence;
2.Abstain from trade or investment that entrenches the occupation;
3.Prevent companies or charities from aiding the settlement enterprise;
4.Ensure diplomatic practice does not legitimise illegality.
“Every state has a legal obligation to act… [and] Britain has failed on every single count,” Ali concluded. He cited the continued arms export licenses, the use of British surveillance aircraft, the continued sale of British petroleum to supply Israel (likely refined into jet fuel for attacks in Gaza) the import of illegal settlement produce into UK markets, and Britain’s abstention on the UN General Assembly’s vote in September 2024 to adopt the ICJ’s findings. Wilde said that the UK has not only failed to fulfil its legal obligations, but has denied, or at least refused to acknowledge, these legal obligations even exist.
It is essential to note that the obligation not to assist an illegal presence is not contingent on proving that such assistance would enable the illegal presence to be maintained. “Whether or not the intent behind this aid or assistance is to support illegality is irrelevant,” Wilde explained. That is because of the inextricable economic, military and social links between the Israeli presence in the OPT on the one hand, and so-called Israel proper (the pre-1967 borders), on the other. This means that it is impossible to identify discrete matters that are not linked to the Israeli presence in the OPT.
Consequently, Wilde explained, the UK is obliged to “address Israel as a general matter” and should stop providing any support to Israel whatsoever, not just support that might end up being used to commit serious violations of international law in the OPT, since any support to Israel “is going to end up, one way or another, supporting the existence of the occupation.”
This was echoed by Francesca Albanese, who challenged the perceived distinction between “Israel” and “the occupied Palestinian territory.” As the ICJ recognised, Israel’s intention is to acquire sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory and to integrate the area, including the settlements, within its territory. Given that Israel has an entire infrastructure and economy that is designed to displace and replace the Palestinian people, Albanese concluded, the economic distinction between “Israel” and “the occupied Palestinian territory” is not meaningful.
Therefore, as Albanese stated, the ICJ ruling creates a duty on states like the UK “to cease all trade, all investment, all economic relations with the state of Israel.”The same logic applies to arms sales. We have already concluded that Britain has failed to fulfill its first obligation: the immediate suspension of arms transfers and related military exports where there is a risk of use in genocide. However, it is not only the duty to prevent genocide that commands the cessation of arms transfers. The totality of Israel’s economy of occupation means that “nothing short of a full arms embargo in Israel will suffice for the UK to start meeting its legal obligation.” Therefore, Britain is compelled to implement an arms embargo on the basis of two obligations: one is the obligation to prevent genocide, and the other is the obligation to not assist with an unlawful presence. By refusing to implement an arms embargo, it has failed on both counts.
We have also learned from Francesca Albanese how the duty to not assist with an unlawful presence exists regardless of whether Israel was committing genocide. The ICJ ruling means that the UK has an obligation to not assist in the maintenance of the illegal occupation, regardless of the genocide in Gaza.
However, it is also worth noting the corollary: any state that continues to engage with Israel’s illegal occupation is in turn also failing in its duty to prevent genocide. That is because, in Francesca Albanese’s words, “Israel’s economy of occupation has turned into an economy of genocide.” When we talk about the risk of genocide, we are talking about “Israel’s entire use of force in the Gaza Strip and occupied Palestinian territory broadly.” By refusing to cut economic ties with Israel, the UK government fails in its duty to prevent genocide all over again.
As laid out in Part Two of this report, the duty of non recognition contains within it a diplomatic dimension and is breached by acts implying acceptance of the unlawful situation—such as treating Israel as entitled to exercise sovereign “self defence” powers in territory it occupies or annexes, or lending political cover that shields its ongoing violations from accountability. Since the start of the genocide, and indeed long before, Britain has not only provided Israel with the military means of carrying out its atrocities, but also provided Israel with the political and diplomatic support it has relied on to act with impunity.
Obligation 4: Support for humanitarian relief and opposition to policies producing famine conditions
Conclusion: Failure
The UK government failed in its obligations to support humanitarian relief in several respects.
First, Keir Starmer infamously endorsed Israel’s right to cut off food and water to the entire population of Gaza.
Second, the Conservative government suspended support for UNRWA at a time when Palestinians needed their services the most. The Labour government restored funding at lower than previous levels, despite the greatly increased need, and it failed to defend the institution from long standing attacks.
Third, Britain also failed in its duties regarding the Israeli interception of the Madleen, a British civilian ship en route to Gaza to provide humanitarian aid. Despite the fact that this ship is protected under international maritime law, this Israeli interception appears to have gone unanswered by the UK government.
Obligation 5: Full co operation with international accountability, including the ICC
Conclusion: Failure
Francesca Albanese and Tayab Ali both drew attention to Articles 86 and 89 of the Rome Statute, which obliges the UK to co-operate with the ICC, execute arrests and surrender indicted individuals found in its territory.
Ali stated: “Britain as a state party to the Rome Statute has undermined the [International Criminal Court]. It has questioned its jurisdiction, withheld support for arrest warrants, and failed to facilitate investigations.” He also drew attention to Britain’s failure to support the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, when he was subject to United States sanctions and attempts by Israel to damage his character. “By refusing to defend the prosecutor, condemn sanctions, or shield the court from interference,” Ali said, “Britain has not only betrayed the victims of Gaza, but actively undermined the very institution designed to deliver justice.”
Ali singled out David Cameron and the allegation that he “directly threatened the prosecutor in relation to the Palestine investigation” when he was Foreign Secretary. If proven, Ali said, “this would amount to direct state interference in judicial independence, a flagrant breach of Britain’s obligations under the Rome Statute.”
Guillaume Long, former foreign minister of Ecuador, concluded that the UK has not initiated a single domestic investigation or prosecution into war crimes in Gaza, nor exercised its universal jurisdiction powers to pursue perpetrators of crimes in Gaza.
2. What could Britain have done?
2.1. Tayab Ali
Tayab Ali listed twelve clear actions that Britain should have implemented, but failed to do:
1.Impose a total arms embargo the moment the ICJ found a plausible risk of genocide, including halting all arms exports, dual use items, and surveillance technologies.
2.End all surveillance flights and intelligence co-operation with Israel unless intelligence was being shared with the ICC for accountability purposes.
3.Suspend all military intelligence and political links with Israel, including training, joint operations, and security co-operation.
4.Suspend its trade agreement with Israel and impose a ban on all settlement products and services.
5.Regulate and penalise companies and charities complicit in Israel’s unlawful occupation, including investigating UK registered charities raising funds for Israeli military units or settlements.
6.Issue wide-reaching, targeted sanctions against senior members of the Israeli political and military establishment responsible for the assault on Gaza and for maintaining the unlawful occupation.
7.Prevent British citizens from traveling to Israel to join the IDF or participate in military operations in line with obligations under counterterrorism and war crimes legislation.
8.Investigate and, where evidence permitted, prosecute British citizens who have served in the IDF and participated in alleged war crimes in Gaza or the OPT under principles of universal jurisdiction.
9.Defend the independence of the ICC prosecutor, condemning sanctions against him and his family and providing financial and diplomatic support to protect the court from political interference.
10.Support UN General Assembly and Security Council processes to enforce the ICJ’s advisory opinion, including sanctioned suspension of Israel’s UN privileges and accountability measures.
11.Expand humanitarian support for Gaza, restoring, increasing and protecting UNRWA to ensure unimpeded humanitarian aid.
12.Led international efforts to enforce accountability, including pushing for the execution of ICC warrants and mobilising like-minded states to isolate those obstructing justice.
“Instead,” Ali said, “Britain has done precisely the opposite: supplying arms, providing political cover, cutting humanitarian aid, and even undermining the very institutions designed to deliver accountability.” Ali’s conclusion was succinct: “Has Britain fulfilled its legal obligations? The answer is no. Britain has not fulfilled them. Britain has breached them. Britain has chosen complicity over prevention, political expediency over legal duty, and silence over justice.”
2.2. Bogotá Commitments Guillaume Long listed six commitments that came out of the Bogotá Emergency Conference for Palestine in July 2025. Convened by the Hague Group and co-chaired by the governments of Colombia and South Africa, the Emergency Conference on Palestine brought together thirty states for two days of intensive deliberation. They emerged with a concrete, coordinated six-point plan to uphold international law. “The main objective,” Long said, was to move beyond condemning and toward “concrete state measures in application of international law.” The commitments are “the kinds of enforcement of international law that the United Kingdom could easily and should absolutely be carrying out in the context of Israel’s crimes under international law.”
The six commitments compelled the UK to:
1.Prevent military and dual use exports to Israel
Throughout 2024, the UK government refused to impose a comprehensive arms embargo and continued in 2025 to issue licenses for weapons components destined for Israel, weapons which we know are being used in the genocide in Gaza.
2.Refuse Israeli weapons transfers at their ports
The UK has not barred arms shipments destined for Israel from its ports. Vessels continue to pass freely through UK ports with equipment that we know is being used in the perpetration of war crimes.
3.Prevent vessels carrying weapons to Israel under their national flags
The UK has issued no prohibition on UK flag ships carrying arms or fuel to Israel and no measures against vessels complicit in violations of international law.
4.Review all public contracts to prevent public institutions and funds from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation
The Conservative government passed legislation in Parliament in June 2023 to restrict public bodies, local authorities, and public universities from boycotting companies involved in Israel’s illegal occupation. This restriction, which was passed by the previous government, has not been reversed by the Labor government.
5.Pursue justice for international crimes
The UK has not initiated a single domestic investigation into or prosecution of war crimes in Gaza.
6.Support universal jurisdiction to hold perpetrators accountable
The UK has not exercised its universal jurisdiction powers to pursue perpetrators of crimes in Gaza.
Long concluded his testimony by stating that:
“The UK is clearly in breach of its obligations under international law, choosing instead to protect its arms industry, its shipping interests, its political alliances over the lives of Palestinians and its commitments under international law. Other governments have shown the law must and can be enforced through arms embargos, port bans, court rulings, public procurement policies, and international litigation. The law exists. The precedence exists. The mechanisms exist… The UK has chosen instead political convenience over legal obligations.”
3. Conclusion
3.1. Has Britain Fulfilled its Legal Obligations?
The people of Britain deserve the truth. The people of Palestine deserve justice. The British government, under the Conservatives and Labour, has failed to fulfill a range of legal obligations under international law, most notably in its obligation to prevent and punish genocide. Forz Khan told the Tribunal that the United Kingdom has not only failed to fulfill its positive legal obligations but has “totally and utterly breached international criminal and UK criminal law.”
The British government has been complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by Israel. Many of our witnesses reached this conclusion, including Ali, who in his testimony stated that “Britain has substantially facilitated international crimes and crossed into the territory of complicity.”
For some witnesses, Britain’s role in Gaza wasn’t a matter only of complicity. “The title of the tribunal is an inquiry into British complicity,” Kennard stated, but he concluded from his research that Britain’s role “crosses a line to participation.” Likewise, Ó Cuinn called the UK “a participant in Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people.” Rami Khayal agreed: “Britain has played and continues to play a key role in this genocide beyond complicity. It has provided the means to carry it out.”
3.2. Consequences
Britain’s failure to meet its legal obligations has contributed to the mass killing of Palestinian civilians and the wholesale destruction of civilian objects, the desecration of international law and the further erosion of Britain’s status as a nation committed to the rule of law in the international arena.
With every witness, the Tribunal revealed that British complicity in genocide has had an immense human cost. As Ali said, “for Palestinians, Britain’s weapons, trade and silence have contributed directly to their suffering and death. Every bomb that falls on Gaza carries with it the shadow of British complicity.” We should never forget that Britain’s failure has, above all, cost Palestinian lives, dignity and freedom.
“By ignoring its obligations under international law,” Long testified, the UK has contributed “to the erosion of international law [and] the global social contract.” Long highlighted Britain’s role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and as a “powerful member of the international community,” suggesting that with this status come greater responsibilities. Britain’s failure to fulfill its legal obligations has had a negative impact not merely on the UK’s own credibility as an international actor but also on post-World War II norms, institutions, and treaties. Likewise, Ali explained how Britain’s failure to uphold its legal obligations “has emboldened those who seek to dismantle international justice altogether.” Namely, its selective reading of the Genocide Convention has “stripped it of universality.” Characterising Britain’s actions and tactics as “a complete disregard for both types of scrutiny, judicial and parliamentary,” Ó Cuinn said that the government was “undermining the rule of law.” Albanese made a similar point: “The longer the UK retains its ties with Israel, the more it contributes to legitimising and normalising the illegal and the festering of impunity.”
The panel accordingly concludes that the British government’s decision to disregard its obligations under international law has also contributed to the weakening of basic international norms relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity and the duty to ensure that the principle of ‘Never Again’ be upheld. Albanese stated that Britain’s failure to protect the international The Gaza 103 Tribunal law-based order has “contributed to this disfigurement and its erosion,” putting “all of us in a situation of fragility and vulnerability to illegality.” In Albanese’s words, “we have entered a phase where might makes right, and none of us has anything to gain from it.”
4. Implications
The violation of international law could implicate individual ministers and officials, including those who have authorised the continuation of economic ties with Israel, as well as the commission of arms trades, arm transfers and intelligence exchange. Khan referred to Article 4 of the Genocide Convention, which states that rulers, public officials and private individuals of a country are liable to punishment if they are found to be complicit with genocide. He also drew attention to section 51 of the 2001 International Criminal Court Act where it is noted that genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are explicitly set out and incorporated into English law. Albanese said that Britain’s failure to abide by long-standing international obligations “alone might be sufficient to establish a case for criminal complicity in the actions of Israel.” This includes government officials who can be held individually responsible for decisions that have been taken.
Ali agreed: “For Britain itself, ministers and officials who authorised unlawful exports [and] obstructed accountability risk exposure under universal jurisdiction for themselves.” The panel concurs and concludes that if we are to change course we must learn from Britain’s profound legal and moral failure. This entails not only changing UK policies to ensure adherence to international law but also holding accountable those responsible for the UK’s complicity with violations of international law and the Genocide Convention. The panel will accordingly work with domestic and international institutions, including UK cause lawyers, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, to draw their attention to evidence presented in this report, including violations of international law and of the Genocide Convention and evidence of criminal complicity implicating government ministers and officials.
5. Recommendations
The panel calls on the UK government to:
1.End all military co-operation with Israel, including:
a.All arms exports and surveillance technologies;
b.Surveillance flights and intelligence exchange;
c.Training, joint operations and security co-operation.
2.Impose economic sanctions, suspend its trade agreement with Israel and impose a ban on all settlement products and services until it ends its illegal occupation.
3.Review all public contracts to prevent public institutions and funds from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation.
4.Issue widespread sanctions against senior members of the Israeli government and military.
5.Conduct investigations against British citizens who participated in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and the OPT.
6.Support South Africa’s submission at the ICJ in the case against Israel (January 2024).
7.Support international efforts to enforce the ICJ ruling (July 2024) regarding Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.
8.Support international accountability mechanisms by co-operating with the ICC and ICJ, and pushing for the execution of arrest warrants of officials wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
9.Stop the criminalisation of anti-genocide protest and de-proscribe Palestine Action.
10.Support Palestinian-led initiatives to rebuild Gaza, particularly in the health, education and food production sectors.
11.Establish a Palestinian Family Visa Scheme, modelled after the Ukrainian visa programme.
12.Restore funding to UNRWA as part of efforts to significantly expand humanitarian support for people in Gaza and demand that it be allowed to operate in the areas Israel occupied in 1967.
13.Join the Hague Group and adhere to the obligations it places on all participating states: to take all possible measures and enforce policies to end Israeli occupation of the State of Palestine and remove obstacles to the realisation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
In the interests of transparency, the UK government must also:
1.Release the full licensing and export data to clarify the nature of military shipments to Israel to date.
2.Publish all legal advice regarding the UK government’s assessment of genocide and its obligations to prevent it as well as the legal advice relating to Israel’s grave violations of IHL. [144]
3.Co-operate with a full, official, independent public inquiry into any co operation between the UK and Israel since October 2023. This inquiry must have the power to question ministers and officials involved in decision-making processes.
4.Provide the ICC and ICJ with all surveillance footage it has collected during RAF overflights of Gaza.
(Notes)
[144] Gaza (Independent Public Inquiry) Bill, Hansard, Last updated February 25, 2026, https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3987
oooooo
“The Palestinian struggle for liberation is integral to all struggles against systems of oppression.”
BEN JAMAL
“Complicity in genocide cannot be forgotten. It should be prosecuted.”
TAYAB ALI
“The UK’s complicity and genocide did not start on October 7th. It did not start on the 15th of May 1948. It started on the day they stepped foot into Palestine.”
HALA SABBAH
