LONDON / PNN /
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. But they urged him to act without delay as “urgent and decisive action is required to avert the destruction of the Palestinian people of Gaza”.
"We are lawyers, legal academics and former judges who are UK-based or qualified. We write owing to our deep concern over the worsening catastrophe in the occupied Palestinian territory (‘oPt’, Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem) and our commitment to upholding the rule of law. Serious violations of international law are being committed and are further threatened by Israel in the oPt," said the lawyers including Lord Sumption, former Justice of the Supreme Court, and Lord Wilson, former Justice of the Supreme Court, as well as Anthony Hooper, former Lord Justice of Appeal and Alan Moses, former Lord Justice of Appeal.
"First, genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza, or, at a minimum, there is a serious risk of genocide occurring. The limited aid now allowed into Gaza, after an 11-week blockade on food, medical supplies and the essentials of human existence, remains gravely insufficient to address the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe," said the letter.
"Israel continues simultaneously to escalate its military operations in Gaza, while senior Israeli Ministers have expressed their intention to “take control of all the territory of the [Gaza] Strip” and “conquer, cleanse and stay – until Hamas is destroyed”, further stating “what remains of the Strip is also being wiped out," the lawyers argued.
"Second, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and serious violations of international humanitarian law are being committed in the oPt. Third, Israel has been found by the International Court of Justice in July 2024 to be violating peremptory norms of international law across the entire oPt in denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination and unlawfully annexing territory acquired by force."
"Israel’s May 2025 plan – the implementation of which began on 16 May 2025 – is to forcibly and permanently displace the population of Gaza to small areas of the Gaza Strip, and coerce their emigration to other countries, in grave violation of international humanitarian law, international criminal law and international human rights law. Israel has moreover decided in May 2025 to facilitate and accelerate settlement development in the West Bank (including the territory designated as Area C under the Oslo Accords). Both measures exacerbate Israel’s ongoing and longstanding breach of the jus cogens (non-derogable)right of self-determination of the Palestinian people," they added.
