People take part in a march for Palestine in Liverpool to coincide with the Labour Party Conference, September 21, 2024 Photo: Neil Terry / neilterryphotography.co.uk
THOUSANDS of peace protesters marched through Liverpool on the eve of Labour conference to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to arms sales to Israel.
One of the biggest demonstrations seen in Liverpool in years, the 15,000-strong crowd brought together activists from across the country with a strong local turnout and wound its way through the city centre to a rally at the Pier Head.
There, suspended Liverpool Labour MP Ian Byrne said that “serious violations of international law” are being carried out by Israel.
“The siege of Gaza is a war crime,” he said, adding that “corporations which send arms to Israel are complicit in these crimes.”
Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, told the rally: “We don’t want 30 arms licences for Israel cancelled, we want them all cancelled.
“War crimes are being committed every single day.”
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Kyiv earlier this month (Leon Neal/AFP)
Ministers and arms company executives could face indictment and a jury trial if arms transfers continue, two rights groups say
Top British officials have been warned they could face criminal liability if they continue to export UK-made components for F-35 fighter jets that might end up in Israel.
The warning, issued in letters sent on Friday to the foreign, business and defence ministers, comes from two groups threatening fresh legal action in the High Court over the export of these parts.
Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, and the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (Glan), told the ministers that they, along with arms company executives, could be indicted for aiding and abetting war crimes if they continue to transfer the components.
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Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq’s general director, said Israel has been carrying out “genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza” for nearly a year.
“We know that Israeli air strikes and bombs using F-35 fighter jets have devastated densely populated areas, including shelters for displaced Palestinians,” Jabarin said.
“The insurmountable evidence that Israel is committing violations and international crimes means the UK government can’t feign ignorance.”
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.
The U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories on September 18, 2024. (Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The vast majority of countries have made it clear: Israel’s occupation of Palestine must end, and all countries have a definite duty not to aid or assist its continuation.”
The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution demanding that the Israeli government end its occupation of Palestinian territories within 12 months, affirming a recent International Court of Justice opinion that deemed the decadeslong occupation unlawful.
The Palestine-led resolution, co-sponsored by dozens of nations, calls on Israel to swiftly withdraw “all its military forces” from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The final vote tally was 124 member states in favor and 14 against, with 43 nations abstaining.
Unsurprisingly, Israel and the United States—Israel’s top ally and arms supplier—were among the 14 countries that opposed the resolution, which is not legally binding. The United Kingdom, which recently suspended some arms export licenses for Israel, abstained from Wednesday’s vote, a decision that the advocacy group Global Justice Now (GJN) said shows “complete disregard for the ongoing suffering of Palestinians forced to live under military-enforced racial discrimination.”
“The vast majority of countries have made it clear: Israel’s occupation of Palestine must end, and all countries have a definite duty not to aid or assist its continuation,” said GJN’s Tim Bierley. “To stay on the right side of international law, the U.K.’s dealings with Israel must drastically change, including closing all loopholes in its partial arms ban and revoking any trade or investment relations that might assist the occupation.”
The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement welcomed passage of the resolution, noting that the U.N. General Assembly voted “for the first time in 42 years” in favor of “imposing sanctions on Israel.”
The resolution specifically calls on all U.N. member states to “implement sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against natural and legal persons engaged in the maintenance of Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in relation to settler violence.”
NEWS: UN General Assembly adopts resolution demanding that Israel brings to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory without delay and within the next 12 months.https://t.co/Vj0Ve1lLBipic.twitter.com/2rKKvDNDqd
The resolution’s passage came nearly two months after the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the U.N.’s highest legal body, handed down an advisory opinion concluding that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal and must end “as rapidly as possible.”
The newly approved resolution states that “respect for the International Court of Justice and its functions… is essential to international law and justice and to an international order based on the rule of law.”
The Biden administration, which is heavily arming the Israeli military as it assails Gaza and the West Bank, criticized the ICJ’s opinion as overly broad.
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement Wednesday that “the Biden administration should join the overwhelming majority of nations around the world in condemning these crimes against the Palestinian people, demanding an end to the occupation, and exerting serious pressure on the Israeli government to comply.”
“We welcome this U.N. resolution demanding an end to one of the worst and ongoing crimes against humanity of the past century,” said Awad.
Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, a group of U.N. experts said in a statement that many countries “appear unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps to meet their obligations” in the wake of the ICJ’s opinion.
“Devastating attacks on Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territory show that by continuing to turn a blind eye to the horrific plight of the Palestinian people, the international community is furthering genocidal violence,” the experts said. “States must act now. They must listen to voices calling on them to take action to stop Israel’s attacks against the Palestinians and end its unlawful occupation. All states have a legal obligation to comply with the ICJ’s ruling and must promote adherence to norms that protect civilians.”
End the genocide in Gaza protest at Labour Party Conference, Liverpool 21 September 2024.
UK Labour Party Conference is starting on Sunday 22 September 2024. A protest has been announced on the 21st protesting the Labour party’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
I oppose Keir Starmer and the UK Labour Party for many reasons: their complicity in and support for Israel’s Zionist genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and attacks on the poor and disabled e.g. denying winter fuel payment benefits from poor and disabled pensioners likely to result in many deaths and the refusals to repeal the two-child benefit cap and the bedroom tax. Essentially the Labour Party are Zionist scum Blue Tories pretending to be Socialists. They are part of a global agenda to diminish international law to facilitate and support Israel’s racist, Fascist, genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.
I object to Labour Party Deputy Angela Rayner’s efforts to attack me while hiding – actually very typical of New Labour sihts in my experience.
Deputy Labour Party Leader Angela Rayner calls for police to kill and harass innocent people.
May be elaborated and extended.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
[dizzy: This article was published April 4, 2024 and refers to the United Kingdom’s previous Conservative government. Since then UK has a new Labour government under UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. UK violating International law will not have changed since April 2024 and Keir Starmer should be well-aware of legal requirements since he is often referred to as a human rights legal expert.]
The UK government has received internal legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law in its current war on Gaza. The advice was revealed by Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee, in a speech to a fundraising event on March 13 and leaked to the UK’s Observer newspaper.
The paper quoted British barrister and war crimes prosecutor Sir Geoffrey Nice as saying: “Countries supplying arms to Israel may now be complicit in criminal warfare. The public should be told what the advice says.”
The Guardian has now revealed that the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has since received a letter signed by 600 lawyers and academics, including three former supreme court justices – among them Baroness Hale, the court’s former president – as well as former court of appeal judges and more than 60 KCs, warning that UK arms sales to Israel are also illegal under international law.
But what does international law actually say on this issue, and what are the UK’s (and other nations’) legal obligations in relation to the ongoing assault on Gaza?
In recent months, a number of countries have announced they are suspending arms exports to Israel. These include Canada, Belgium, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, as well as the Japanese company Itochu Corporation. Germany and the US – by far the biggest suppliers of arms to Israel – have not as yet signalled intentions to follow suit.
Neither has the UK. But with arms exports amounting to £42 million in 2022, it is not one of Israel’s major suppliers.
Suspending arms exports to Israel indicates not only political concerns, but also fear over the legality of continuing to support Israel militarily in its assault on Gaza. The Netherlands court of appeal ruled in February that the Dutch government must discontinue its sales of F35 fighter jet parts on the basis of its obligations under the UN arms trade treaty. A similar lawsuit is currently pending in Denmark which exports F35 parts to the US, which then sells the finished jets to Israel.
In the UK, the high court dismissed an attempt to challenge the government’s continued licensing of arms exports to Israel. But this was because the particular procedural hurdle that applicants in such cases have to get over is notoriously high. The judgment said nothing definitive as to Israel’s (or the UK’s) compliance with international law.
Following this, 130 MPs and peers from across party lines recently signed a letter to the foreign secretary calling on the government to suspend arms exports to Israel.
Arms trade treaty
So what is the position under international law of countries, such as the UK, that support Israel militarily? There are many specific and general rules of international law that are relevant here.
The most obvious, and the one emphasised in the British MPs’ letter, is found in the UN arms trade treaty, to which the UK is a party. Article 7 requires a risk assessment for all weapons transfers, and prohibits exports where there is an overriding risk that the weapons could be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict).
The only objective test we have for determining risk of future violations is to examine whether there is evidence of a pattern of past violations by Israel. UN reporting of past serious violations is one of the key considerations that the UK’s own policy points to in determining future risk. In 2019, the UK court of appeal suspended arms exports to Saudi Arabia based on the government’s failure to assess whether past violations of international law had likely been committed in Yemen.
The available evidence suggests there have been countless examples of Israeli actions in Gaza that appear, on their face, to be inconsistent with international humanitarian law. Among the most recent examples are the Israeli attack on an aid convoy on April 1, the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, and the well-documented famine that now engulfs the territory.
The Hague court of appeal that ordered the Dutch government to suspend arms exports to Israel relied on reports from Amnesty International and the UN when it listed multiple examples of apparent violations of the law of armed conflict in Gaza.
And in the long-awaited UN security council resolution adopted on March 25, with the US abstaining, the security council condemned “all attacks against civilians and civilian objects, as well as all violence and hostilities against civilians”, and demanded the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, in line with international humanitarian law.
This suggests a pattern of past serious violations and thus a clear risk of continuing violations. So, signatories to the arms trade treaty continuing to supply weapons to Israel likely do so in breach of article 7.
Geneva conventions
Yet all nations have other obligations that take on particular importance in relation to Gaza. One of these is the obligation to prevent genocide under article 1 of the Genocide convention (which was the focus of the letter to the prime minister referred to above).
This is especially relevant since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined in January that there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm to the rights of Palestinians in Gaza under the Genocide Convention.
But it also includes article 1 of the 1949 Geneva conventions, which requires states to “ensure respect” for international humanitarian law. There is overwhelming support for the view that this requires all states not only to avoid aiding or assisting violations (for example, through arms exports) but to take proactive steps to ensure warring parties comply with their obligations under international law. They can do so via diplomatic channels or by imposing sanctions.
On March 1, Nicaragua instituted proceedings before the ICJ against Germany (the second-biggest arms exporter to Israel), in part alleging that it is violating article 1 of the Geneva conventions due to its support for Israel.
In this way, all countries are legally obliged to ensure that others comply with international humanitarian law. If the catastrophic destruction, massive civilian death toll and immense suffering of those still alive in Gaza is not enough to pull Israel’s allies into line over their continuing arms sales, it is difficult to conceive of any situation that ever could.
