'Disingenuous': UK government slammed for not concluding Israel committing genocide
'Disingenuous': UK government slammed for not concluding Israel committing genocide
Independent MPs on Tuesday condemned the British government after it said it has not concluded Israel is acting with genocidal intent, despite "appalling" civilian suffering.
In a letter dated 1 September and revealed on Monday night, Foreign Secretary David Lammy - who left the role last Friday and was replaced by Yvette Cooper - said that "the crime of genocide occurs only where there is specific 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.'
"The government has not concluded that Israel is acting with that intent."
Lammy has previously said it was for an international court to determine whether Israel was committing genocide.
The International Court of Justice, the UN's principal judicial body, is currently weighing evidence of genocide against Israel, in a case that is expected to take years to conclude.
But multiple authoritative reports by Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights groups have already concluded that Israel has committed genocide, citing evidence of its acts of killing and destruction, as well as evidence of the intent to destroy Palestinians as a group in Gaza.
Leading experts in international law and the Holocaust have also told Middle East Eye that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal threshold for genocide.
Likewise, the world's largest association of genocide scholars last week passed a resolution, endorsed by 86 percent of its members, saying genocide is taking place in Gaza.
Independent MP Iqbal Mohamed told Middle East Eye Lammy's letter is "despicable".
He said it "confirms that the government does not believe that Palestinians have a right not to be bombed or starved".
Independent MP Ayoub Khan told MEE that Lammy's reasoning was flawed.
"Intent to commit genocide could not be clearer," he said.
"When Israeli leaders openly state that Gaza will be 'erased,' when they declare that 'no civilians exist in Gaza,' when ministers call Palestinians 'human animals,' and when this rhetoric is followed by the systematic killing of tens of thousands, starvation of children, destruction of hospitals, universities, water systems, and the entire civic fabric of life - the intent is explicit.
"To pretend otherwise is a legal and moral farce."
Khan accused the Labour government of "misleading the British public – deliberately downplaying, obfuscating and providing political cover to atrocities."
He added: "This is not merely a policy failure. It is a profound betrayal of international law, of Britain’s obligations under the Genocide Convention, and of basic human decency.
"It is disgraceful, it is disgusting, and history will not forget it."
No 'serious risk of genocide'
In his letter, addressed to Labour MP Sarah Champion, Lammy said that the International Court of Justice "has neither found that Israel has breached its obligations under the Genocide Convention, nor ruled on the plausibility of Israel committing genocide.
"Accordingly, we do not consider that the ICJ's Provisional Measures Orders should be regarded as creating an awareness of a serious risk of genocide."
South Africa brought its case before the ICJ in December 2023, accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention, to which Israel is a party, in Gaza.
'To say that the ICJ's orders did not create awareness of a serious risk of genocide is sophistry at best, deliberately disingenuous at worst'
- Dr Juliette McIntyre, legal expert
On 26 January 2024, the ICJ said that it was plausible that Israel had breached the Genocide Convention. As an emergency measure, it ordered Israel ensure that its army refrained from genocidal acts against Palestinians.
Dr Juliette McIntyre, an expert on international courts, dismissed Lammy’s statement as “blatantly false”.
“To say that the ICJ's orders did not create awareness of a serious risk of genocide is sophistry at best, deliberately disingenuous at worst,” said the scholar and professor at the University of South Australia.
“The ICJ held that the right of Palestinians to be protected from genocide was plausible, and ordered provisional measures on this ground,” she told MEE.
“Were those rights not plausible, there would have been no basis for the orders to be made,” McIntyre explained.
“The only possible way that your right to be protected from genocide can be breached is by having genocide committed against you.”
McIntyre emphasised that the 1948 Genocide Convention, to which the UK is a party, obliges states to prevent genocide.
“It is about ensuring that States cannot turn a blind eye to events and their obligations of prevention,” she said.
Israel's nearly two-year assault on the Palestinian enclave has killed and wounded more than 230,000 people, according to local authorities, and reduced most homes and infrastructure to rubble.
F-35 components
Lammy further claimed that the UK "is not 'arming' Israel's war in Gaza".
Last September, the newly elected Labour government suspended around 30 export licences for UK-made arms.
The licensing of UK-made F-35 components exported directly to Israel were suspended, but parts sent to a global F-35 programme spare parts pool which could end up in Israel were exempted.
UK-made F-35 components make up 15 percent of every F-35, one of the world's most sophisticated fighter jets which Israel has used extensively in its campaign in Gaza, as well as in Lebanon and more recently in Iran.
Lammy argued in the letter that there was no way the UK could unilaterally halt the export of UK-made parts without impacting the worldwide fleet of F-35s.
This comes as Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog for talks on Wednesday evening.
Herzog is understood to be arriving in London on Tuesday despite widespread anger over the meeting.
