UK complicit in desecration of international law in Gaza, says Corbyn-led tribunal

The Labour government has been complicit in crimes committed by Israel in Gaza and in the desecration of international law, according to an unoffical tribunal on Gaza chaired by the former party leader Jeremy Corbyn and two specialists in international law.The tribunal’s findings to be published on Monday are likely to be cited in May’s local elections, in which Labour faces a rearguard action to beat off challenges from the Greens and Your Party, in part driven by anger that the government has not done enough to back the Palestinian cause.The tribunal took evidence from lawyers, medical professionals, former Foreign Office officials and Palestinians, and focused largely on whether the UK should have done more to end its cooperation with Israel to avoid being accused of failing to meet its duty to prevent a genocide.It finds that the government should have ended all arms exports to Israel, stopped sharing intelligence and reviewed its trade relations with the country, especially after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said in a July 2024 advisory opinion that Israel was occupying Palestine unlawfully.The tribunal’s report reads: “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.”It says the UK not only failed to meet its duty to seek to prevent a genocide, but in some instances actively participated in such acts.The Foreign Office says it has imposed three sets of sanctions in response to settler violence in the West Bank and opposes all forms of forced displacement.The Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, told MPs earlier this month that the government “was due to update parliament on the wider issues posed by the ICJ advisory opinion”. “There must be accountability and justice for all crimes committed right across Palestinian and Israeli territory,” he said.The ICJ has not yet had a full hearing on whether a genocide was committed in Gaza, but it said in January 2024 that there was a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to Palestinians’ rights to be protected from acts of genocide.The two co-chairs of the tribunal were Dr Shahd Hammouri, a lecturer in international law at the University of Kent, and Neve Gordon, a professor of human rights law at Queen Mary University of London.Much of the report focuses on the legal duties that the ICJ rulings placed on the government. It concludes that the January 2024 finding placed all states on clear notice that their duty under the Geneva conventions to prevent genocide had been engaged, and doing so required “more than expressions of concern”.The fundamental duty should not be superseded by contractual obligations to US arms manufacturers, or by stating that no definitive conclusion had been reached by international courts, it says.The 112-page report also claims the ICJ advisory opinion on the unlawfulness of the Israeli occupation of Palestine placed a legal duty on the UK and other states to abstain from entering into trade dealings with Israel concerning the occupied territories, especially if the trade might entrench its “unlawful presence”.In his preface, Corbyn says the report “will help cement Labour’s legacy as an active participant in one of the great crimes of our time”.The tribunal, drawing on evidence compiled in a UN domestic court case brought by the Global Legal Action Network, found the government had imposed a requirement on itself to ask Israel for justification of specific attacks in Gaza, leading it to conclude that a breach of international humanitarian law had definitively occurred in only one of the 413 cases examined.The report says its perverse self-imposed methodology “required the government to examine the impact of an individual strike on a hospital, but not the lawfulness of the decimation of the whole healthcare system”.In evidence cited by the tribunal, Falconer told MPs that reaching a conclusion about individual incidents required specific sensitive information “such as the intended targets, anticipated military advantage and anticipated civilian harm, which is often not available to us”.The tribunal recommends the government release all licensing data, publish all legal advice concerning its obligation to prevent genocide, set up a full public inquiry and provide the ICJ with all the surveillance footage it compiled during RAF overflights of Gaza.The tribunal’s findings are likely to be used by the left to attack Labour in the local elections. A Vote Palestine 2026 campaign backed by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is calling for Gaza to be on the ballot paper given that local councils invest billions in Israel. So far 1,200 council candidates have signed the PSC’s commitment to Palestine.Local pacts are being encouraged in which independents and local Green parties cooperate to target Labour councillors. Your Party, of which Corbyn is the parliamentary leader, said it would be “campaigning loudly on Gaza and Palestine including by calling on councils to divest from Israel”.