The UK must impose sanctions on the Israeli government and its ministers and also consider suspending it from the UN to meet its ‘fundamental international legal obligations’, more than 800 lawyers, academics and retired senior judges, including former supreme court justices, have said.
In a letter to the prime minister, they welcomed Keir Starmer’s joint statement last week with the leaders of France and Canada warning that they were prepared to take ‘concrete actions’ against Israel, reports Britain’s The Guardian newspaper.
But they urged him to act without delay as ‘urgent and decisive action was required to avert the destruction of the Palestinian people of Gaza’.
The signatories, including the former supreme court justices Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson, court of appeal judges and more than 70 lawyers, said that war crimes, crimes against humanity and serious violations of international humanitarian law were being committed in Palestine.
There was mounting evidence of genocide, which was either being perpetrated or at a minimum at serious risk of occurring, the letter stated, highlighting recent comments by the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who said Israel’s army would ‘wipe out’ what remained of Palestinian Gaza.
The signatories told Starmer: “All states, including the UK, are legally obliged to take all reasonable steps within their power to prevent and punish genocide; to ensure respect for international humanitarian law; and to bring to an end violations of the right to self-determination.
“The UK’s actions to date have failed to meet those standards … The international community’s failure to uphold international law in relation to the occupied Palestinian territory contributes to a deteriorating international climate of lawlessness and impunity and imperils the international legal system itself. Your government must act now, before it is too late.”
The legal experts called on UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy to immediately sanction Israeli ministers or senior officials in the Israel Forces who they accused of having incited genocide or supporting and sponsoring illegal settlements.
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