02 April 2024

UK government hides vital legal advice - re arms to Israel.

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

“The Foreign Office has received official legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law but the government has not announced it.”

The British government has received advice from its lawyers that Israel has violated international humanitarian law in the Gaza Strip, but failed to make the information public, according to a leaked recording obtained by the Observer newspaper.

Alicia Kearns, the Conservative Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, made the comments at a fundraiser for the Tory Party on March 13, reported the Guardian, sister paper to the Observer.

“The Foreign Office has received official legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law but the government has not announced it,” she is quoted as having said.

“They have not said it, they haven’t stopped arms exports. They have done a few very small sanctions on Israeli settlers and everyone internationally is agreed that settlers are illegal, that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing, and the ways in which they have continued and the money that’s been put in.”

‘Intense Pressure’

The paper said that Kearns, who has repeatedly pressed ministers, including foreign secretary David Cameron on the issue, stood by her comments and called for the government to come clean.

The former Foreign Office and Ministry of Defense official is reported as having said on Saturday night that she remained “convinced the government has completed its updated assessment on whether Israel is demonstrating a commitment to international humanitarian law, and that it has concluded that Israel is not demonstrating this commitment, which is the legal determination it has to make.”