Former supreme court judges say UK arming Israel breaches international law
Exclusive: More than 600 prominent lawyers sign letter that calls for end to exports as a ‘measure to prevent’ genocide

Haroon Siddique, Eleni Courea and Patrick Wintour
Wed 3 Apr 2024 22.00 BST
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Three former supreme court justices, including the court’s former president Lady Hale, are among more than 600 lawyers, academics and retired senior judges warning that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.

In a letter to the prime minister, the signatories, who also include former court of appeal judges and more than 60 KCs, say that the present situation in Gaza is “catastrophic” and that given the international court of justice (ICJ) finding that there is a plausible risk of genocide being committed, the UK is legally obliged to act to prevent it.

The 17-page letter, which also amounts to a legal opinion, was sent on Wednesday evening and says: “While we welcome the increasingly robust calls by your government for a cessation of fighting and the unobstructed entry to Gaza of humanitarian assistance, simultaneously to continue (to take two striking examples) the sale of weapons and weapons systems to Israel and to maintain threats of suspending UK aid to Unwra falls significantly short of your government’s obligations under international law.”

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It comes as Conservative MPs piled pressure on Rishi Sunak to act after seven international aid workers, including three British citizens, were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Monday. Party sources believe that the foreign secretary, David Cameron, has been pushing for the government to harden its approach to Israel but has been met with resistance from Downing Street.

Three Tory backbenchers and one former minister now in the Lords said that the UK should stop exporting arms to Israel after the airstrike, while the findings of a YouGov poll, conducted before the strike, suggested that the government and Labour are out of step with public sentiment, with a majority of voters – by 56% to 17% – in favour of an arms ban.

The letter calls for the government to work towards a permanent ceasefire and to impose sanctions “upon individuals and entities who have made statements inciting genocide against Palestinians”. It says that restoring funding to Unrwa – which was withdrawn after Israel’s yet-to-be-substantiated allegations that 12 staff at the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees were involved in the 7 October attacks – is necessary for “effective entry and distribution of the means of existence to Palestinians in Gaza, and by extension the prevention of genocide”.