Mark Smith said he had been the lead author of the central assessment governing the legality of UK arms sales to the Middle East
The British civil servant who resigned over concerns that the government is complicit in Israeli war crimes in Gaza has said he was formerly the lead author of the central assessment governing the legality of UK arms sales in the Foreign Office’s Middle East and North Africa Directorate.
Diplomat Mark Smith’s resignation was first reported when prominent journalist Hind Hassan posted the contents of his resignation letter on X on Friday evening. On Saturday Middle East Eye confirmed the resignation through two sources familiar with the situation.
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In a statement issued on Sunday, Smith added that he was the lead author of the central assessment governing the legality of UK arms sales in the Middle East and North Africa Directorate.
He said: “It was my job to gather all relevant information regarding civilian casualties, international law compliance as well as assess the commitment and capabilities of the countries in question.”
“To export arms to any nation, the UK must be satisfied that the recipient nation has in place robust procedures to avoid civilian casualties and to minimize harm to civilian life. It is impossible to argue that Israel is doing that.”
It is unclear when Smith, who appears to have been at the British embassy in Dublin since at least 2022, was in this role.
Smith said he has written to Foreign Secretary David Lammy informing him of his resignation.
“I sincerely hope that he will listen to the concerns of Civil Servants on this issue and make the necessary changes.”
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators chant slogans before marching with placards and flags to commemorate Nakba Day at Lake Eola Park on May 11, 2024 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo: Paul Hennessy/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We must double down on our demands ahead of the DNC, where we’ll be marching in the streets for the liberation of all,” said one campaigner.
Leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, calls for the U.S. government to stop arming Israel’s devastating assault on the Gaza Strip—widely denounced around the world as genocide—continued to mount on Friday.
“We join the millions of people who’ve taken action the last 10 months, taxpayers who don’t want to pay for genocide and are demanding an immediate arms embargo on Israel,” U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) executive director Ahmad Abuznaid said in a statement Friday.
“We know that politicians won’t change their unjust policies until it’s in their own self-interest to do so,” he continued. “We must double down on our demands ahead of the DNC, where we’ll be marching in the streets for the liberation of all.”
Pro-Palestine protests in Chicago are set to start Sunday, a day before the DNC officially begins. They will continue throughout the week, according to a schedule shared Friday by the Chicago Sun-Times. The March on the DNC is planned for Monday afternoon.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, a coalition of progressive and legal groups and individuals expressed “grave concerns” about recent moves by the Chicago Police Department and the city to stop protests and vowed to take legal action as needed.
The Uncommitted National Movement’s Not Another Bomb campaign is also planning a nationwide day of action for Sunday.
Director of Not Another Bomb @lexisdenazeidan is here to share some tangible steps to support the mov't demanding the Biden/Harris administration enact an arms embargo to save Palestinian lives right now.
— Uncommitted National Movement 🌺 (@uncommittedmvmt) August 15, 2024
The movement formed when Democratic President Joe Biden was still at the top of the ticket throughout the presidential primary process; hundreds of thousands of voters across the country selected “uncommitted” or took similar action, depending on the options for each state’s ballot, to send the administration a message that they don’t support giving Israel any more military aid.
After a disastrous debate performance against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, Biden dropped out of the race and passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris, who has already secured the party’s nomination via an online process and announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Biden, Harris, and Walz are all set to speak at the convention.
“USCPR calls on the Biden-Harris administration, the Harris-Walz campaign, members of Congress, and the DNC to stop arming Israel now, as the Democratic Party currently has the power to end the genocide by cutting off the endless weapons supply to Israel,” the group said Friday.
Since last week, Not Another Bomb has been gathering online signatures for a petition urging Harris “to shift away from President Biden’s disastrous policy on Gaza, and pledge to enact an immediate arms embargo on Israel’s assault and occupation against Palestinians as a material step towards a permanent cease-fire.”
“Consider the overwhelming sentiment among your constituents: 86% of Democrats support the proposed cease-fire deal in Gaza,” the petition notes. “This is the mainstream view of our party’s base, as evidenced by a recent poll that reveals that 52% of Americans and 62% of Biden/Harris voters agree with halting arms sales to Israel. In addition, 70% of Democratic voters support withdrawing U.S. military funding to Israel if Israel rejects the proposed cease-fire deal, as Israel has continuously done.”
Polling released this week shows that Democratic and Independent voters in three key swing states—Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania—would be more willing to vote for Harris in November if she supported cutting off weapons to Israeli forces. However, one of her advisers recently made clear that “she does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”
The only way to reach a ceasefire in Gaza is for the US to stop sending bombs that enable Israel’s genocide & occupation in Palestine. That’s why we're calling for an arms embargo.
— Jewish Voice for Peace Action (@JvpAction) August 7, 2024
March on the DNC spokesperson Hatem Abudayyeh told Reuters on Friday that coalition group leaders met after Biden bowed out of the contest to discuss whether they should revise their strategy if Harris became the Democratic nominee.
“There was absolute consensus,” Abudayyeh said. “She represents the policies of the administration and it’s full steam ahead.”
The Biden-Harris administration and current Congress have provided Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance as well as diplomatic support on the world stage, including multiple vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions.
Fresh calls have come this week not only in anticipation of the convention but also since the Biden administration on Tuesday approved roughly $20 billion in additional U.S.-made weapons for Israel’s military as the official death toll in Gaza neared 40,000. Local officials said Friday that at least 40,005 Palestinians have been killed and another 92,401 have been wounded.
Thousands more remain missing amid the rubble in Gaza and the vast majority of the Palestinian enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been forced to relocate, many of them multiple times. Israeli forces on Friday issued yet another evacuation order for areas in central and southern Gaza—including “safe zones”—leaving Palestinians with “nowhere to go.”
Activists demand an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel during a May 2, 2024 protest outside the White House in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Amnesty International USA)
“U.S. arms transfers to Israel have fueled unimaginable suffering in Gaza, including staggering levels of civilian harm,” said one embargo advocate.
As the Palestinian death toll from Israel’s 314-day assault on Gaza passed 40,000—a figure experts say is likely a vast undercount—human rights groups this week decried the Biden administration’s approval of $20 billion worth of new weapons for Israel and renewed pleas for Congress to block further arms transfers to the nation on trial for genocide at the World Court.
On Tuesday—just days after Israeli forces used at least one U.S.-supplied bomb in an airstrike on a Gaza City school that killed scores of forcibly displaced Palestinian civilians sheltering there—the Biden administration notified Congress of the pending sale of a new weapons package that includes dozens of F-15 fighter jets, tens of thousands of 120mm mortar shells, over 32,700 tank shells, and 30 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles.
Since October, Congress and the Biden administration have approved more than $14 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel. President Joe Biden has signed off on more than 100 arms transfers to Israel during that period. This, atop the $3.8 billion in annual armed aid the U.S. already gives to the key Middle Eastern ally.
“Israel used U.S.-made weapons in May when it slaughtered Palestinian families sheltering in tent camps in Rafah,” Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) said Wednesday. “Israel used U.S.-made weapons when it bombed the al-Mutanabbi school in Khan Younis in early July, killing over two dozen displaced Palestinians seeking refuge there. And it used U.S.-made weapons on Saturday to murder over 100 Palestinians while they prayed.”
President Biden's new $20B arms sale to Israel is unthinkable as Palestinians in Gaza remain at risk of genocide. We urge Congress to block the sale and uphold US and international law. The US must immediately suspend all weapons sales and transfers to the Israeli government. pic.twitter.com/vfOghDAE9e
“Biden continues to send weapons to Israel, and both political parties—Republicans and Democrats—have cheered on the Israeli government’s slaughter and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” JVP continued. “This is a U.S.-perpetrated genocide as much as it is an Israeli one.”
“But the Democratic voting base is calling for something different, and we have seen the progressive and increasingly mainstream wing of the party begin to echo this need,” the group said. “We are playing a critical role in driving the Democratic Party to finally catch up to the demands of its own base.”
“Right now, we have an opportunity to re-center Gaza in the national conversation and continue building pressure on the Biden administration, on [Vice President] Kamala Harris, and on Democratic members of Congress to support an immediate arms embargo,” JVP added.
While Harris has expressed sympathy for Palestinians suffering what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, the vice president and Democratic presidential nominee, like Biden, has proclaimed her “unwavering” support for Israel. One aide said last week that Harris does not support an arms embargo.
“The decision to approve yet another massive sale of arms to Israel is appalling and a blatant violation of U.S. and international law and policy,” Annie Shiel, the U.S. advocacy director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, said on Thursday.
“U.S. arms transfers to Israel have fueled unimaginable suffering in Gaza, including staggering levels of civilian harm, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and an ever-growing humanitarian catastrophe,” Shiel continued. “The U.S. is complicit in this devastation.”
“Congress must block these sales, including through the introduction of joint resolutions of disapproval,” she added, “and the Biden-Harris administration must finally end U.S. arms transfers and use its leverage to bring about an immediate cease-fire.”
The Biden administration just approved $20 billion in arms sales to Israel – these weapons will kill children in Gaza. US Congress can block these sales – but they’re on recess, and for 10 months have failed to take action to stop arming Israel. #NoRecessForGaza#NotAnotherBombpic.twitter.com/URd7srhJMV
The international anti-poverty NGO ActionAid said Thursday: “We are outraged and heartbroken by the staggering loss of 40,000 lives in Gaza. It is a number that is incomprehensible—every life lost is an individual tragedy.”
“But this is not an inevitable one, it is an ongoing atrocity, and it could have been prevented,” the group continued. “Most governments across the world have refused to do the bare minimum to protect civilian life and it is to our collective shame. We are losing confidence each day in the concept of justice.”
“We reiterate our calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities and urge all governments to meet their obligations under international law and use all available means to take immediate and decisive action to ensure the safety and security of all civilians,” ActionAid said.
“We call for the imposition of sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, on Israeli officials linked to alleged violations of international humanitarian law,” the NGO added. “Every day that you choose to avoid this as a reality, this death toll will keep rising until there is nobody left in Gaza alive.”
In addition to the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and for three Hamas leaders, at least one of whom has been assassinated by Israeli forces.
The Biden administration and numerous members of Congress have condemned the courts’ pursuit of justice for Israel and its leaders. In June, 42 Democrats joined nearly every Republican in the House of Representatives in passing a bill that would sanction ICC officials over Khan’s application for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
In addition to rights groups, a coalition of journalists, news outlets, and press freedom organizations on Thursday implored the Biden administration to immediately halt arms transfers to Israel.
As the tight 2024 presidential race between Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, heads toward the home stretch, a survey commissioned by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project and conducted by YouGov revealed this week that Democratic and Independent voters in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania would be more willing to vote for Harris if she backed an arms embargo on Israel.
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip flee from Hamad City, following an evacuation order by the Israeli army to leave parts of the southern area of Khan Younis, August 11, 2024
A CALL by Prime Minister Keir Starmer for “de-escalation and regional stability” in the Middle East has been criticised by Palestine rights campaigners.
Sir Keir made the plea alongside French and German leaders Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz who urged Iran and its allies not to “jeopardise the opportunity to agree a ceasefire and the release of hostages” in Gaza.
But the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said the call “rings hollow when these same leaders maintain their complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
PSC said: “40,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel’s genocidal assault. Every day we wake up to new scenes of Israel’s latest massacre of displaced Palestinian men, women and children.
“Starmer, Macron and Scholz are all complicit in these atrocities so long as they continue to sell arms to Israel and provide diplomatic cover for its war crimes.
“The quickest way for our leaders to bring about the ceasefire that they claim to want is to immediately ban all arms trade with Israel.”
Relatives of Palestinians killed by the Israeli attack on Nuseirat refugee camp mourn as the bodies are brought to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 10, 2024. (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It is hard to comprehend how the Biden administration can justify rewarding Israel with new weapons, despite Israel’s persistent defiance of every single plea the Biden administration has made urging a modicum of restraint.”
Just hours after the Biden administration Friday announced approval of $3.5 billion in military funds for Israel and shipments for new weaponry, an Israeli bombing of a school-turned-shelter in Gaza has killed 100 people or more, including scores of civilian men, women, and children in what was described as a “bloody massacre” that struck during morning prayers, leaving body parts scattered “in pieces” and healthcare workers overwhelmed with the dead and wounded.
The Palestinian Authority’s Fatah government in the Occupied West Bank released a statement Saturday describing the attack on the al-Tabin school in Gaza City as a “heinous bloody massacre” that represents the “peak of terrorism and criminality” by the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Committing these massacres confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt its efforts to exterminate our people through the policy of cumulative killing and mass massacres that make living consciences tremble,” said the PA.
“If the ICC doesn’t take action now, then when?”
Footage taken by volunteers working alongside Palestinian medical units in Gaza City showed wounded small children and adults being taken to local hospitals as well as scenes of carnage from the scene of the bombing [Warning: Images are graphic]. Gaza journalist Motasem A. Dalloul also posted his reporting from the scene, including footage of the carnage [Also graphic].
Al-Jazeera spoke with witnesses at the scene of the massacre, one of whom said many of the dead—which included women, children, and old people who had been praying and others sleeping when the missiles struck—were collected afterward “in pieces”:
Tamer Kirolos, a regional director for Save the Children, called Israel’s attack on al-Tabin the “deadliest attack on a school since last October.”
“It is devastating to see the toll this has taken, including so many children and people at the school for dawn prayers,” Kirolos said. “Civilians, children, must be protected. An immediate definitive ceasefire is the only foreseeable way that will happen.”
Just hours before the bombing, the U.S. State Department announcement that a $3.5 billion tranche of funds—part of a larger $14.1 billion in overseas military aid approved by Congress earlier this year—would be released to the Israeli government for weapons procurement.
As CNN reported, while some of those weapons purchases made possible by the fund may take years, the “supplemental funding also allocated billions of dollars’ worth of equipment that the Pentagon can draw from its own stockpiles to send directly to Israel on a much faster timeline.”
Unverified reporting indicated that at least one of the missiles dropped on the al-Tabin school overnight may have been a U.S.-made MK-84 bomb weighing 2,000 pounds.
Gaza: In the largest and most shameful concentration camp of the 21st century, Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one 'safe zone' at the time. With US and European… https://t.co/bHmrFbySYi
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) August 10, 2024
On Friday night, after the State Department announcement but before news of the latest bombing in Gaza broke, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the human rights and advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), was among those confounded by the U.S. government’s continued determination to arm the Israelis in the face of the human suffering in Gaza and the repeated massacre of civilians, day after day and month after month.
“It is mind-boggling that despite the overwhelming evidence of the IDF’s unprecedented crimes in Gaza that has shocked the conscience of the entire world, the Biden administration is greenlighting the transfer of additional lethal weapons to Israel,” said Whitson in a Friday night statement following news that the State Dept. had greenlit the release of taxpayer funds for a new round of weapons destined for Israel.
“It is hard to comprehend how the Biden administration can justify rewarding Israel with new weapons, despite Israel’s persistent defiance of every single plea the Biden administration has made urging a modicum of restraint,” she said, “and despite the very apparent fact that such sales violate black letter U.S. laws prohibiting weapons to gross abusers like Israel.”
Making a similar argument in a Saturday morning post on X, Sami Abou Shehadeh, leader of Israel’s leftist Balad Party, said that while President Joe Biden “could have stopped the genocide” by using his leverage of military aid to force the Israelis in a different direction, instead “he just released $3.5 billion for more weapons to kill civilians.”
Shehadeh warned that without any internal opposition “to the genocide” by Israel’s Zionist political parties, Netanyahu’s policies would continue, even as the region inches toward further destabilization over the crisis in Gaza that has also spread to Lebanon and beyond. Calling for the International Criminal Court to intervene, he asked, “If the ICC doesn’t take action now, then when?”
“The school area is strewn with dead bodies and body parts. It is very difficult for paramedics to identify a whole dead body. There’s an arm here, a leg there. Bodies are ripped to pieces”
Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and co-founder of Progressive International, asked the same on Saturday.
“Israel has now killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded well over 92,000 others,” said Varoufakis. “Thousands more lie, uncounted, under the debris. Some 10,000 Palestinians have been abducted by Israel’s occupying forces. Question: Where is the ICC indictment?”
“It is truly horrific,” Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s policy director told Common Dreams via email Saturday. “Last night’s massacre was another example of how Blinken and Biden have blood on their hands.”
Referencing a separate decision by the State Department to suspend an investigation into documented abuse violations by the “notorious” Netzah Yehuda Unit within the IDF, Jarrar said the “decisions of sending weapons to Israel and not sanctioning Israeli human rights abusers are not just corrupt policy decisions, they are criminal acts.”
Update: This article has been updated from its original to include additional comment from DAWN.
