More than 130 legal experts, including 18 king’s counsel (KCs), have written to Andy Burnham saying that sanctions on Israeli settlements “fall far short” of Britain’s obligations under the international court of justice’s (ICJ’s) finding that the occupation is unlawful.
The foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, last week announced an import ban on goods from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine and other measures. Signatories to the letter to the prime minister, including the leading lawyers Michael Mansfield KC and Imran Khan KC, and the former lord justice of appeal Alan Moses, say it is not enough.
In a 2024 advisory opinion, the ICJ, which is the UN’s top court, ordered Israel to end the occupation “as rapidly as possible” and said other countries were under an obligation not to recognise the occupation as lawful nor aid or assist it.
The letter, sent on Tuesday, says the ICJ’s findings have “not had an impact on Israel’s apartheid practice” and, while the UK sanctions are “a necessary corrective”, they are “improperly narrow” when compared with sanctions on Russia, which are not limited to economic activity in occupied Ukrainian territory but apply to wider economic structures supporting the unlawful conduct.
It says: “We ask it to commit to further and more rigorous measures to ensure that no part of the UK’s economic relationship with Israel continues to sustain the illegal occupation itself, and the settlements and other serious violations of fundamental rules of international law perpetrated through its conduct, and to build on this to adopt robust coercive measures to seek to bring all these serious violations of international law, and the practices they sustain, including, fundamentally, the occupation itself, to an end.
The letter, also signed by legal academics, calls for a range of additional measures including a full arms embargo on Israel. When announcing the sanctions, Miliband accused Israel of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and the signatories say article 6(3) of the arms trade treaty prohibits transfers of arms where a state has knowledge of such a crime.
The sanctions were announced after escalating attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian villages in the West Bank and an Israeli tender was issued for 1,200 homes in the E1 settlement, east of Jerusalem, which could in effect cut off the north from the south of the West Bank, threatening the viability of any future Palestinian state.
The signatories want extension of the sanctions to cover insurance, accountancy services and digital infrastructure as well as public confirmation that no UK public body, pension scheme or sovereign fund holds settlement investments.
One of the letter’s signatories and drafters, Ralph Wilde, a professor of international law at University College London, welcomed the UK’s recent recognition of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank as unlawful as an “important shift”, but said it fell short in its focus on the settlements and settlers.
“The elephant in the room is the illegality of the occupation itself,” said Wilde, who acted as senior counsel and legal adviser to the Arab League in the case before the ICJ. “It’s not just simply the settlements and the abuse of treatment and the genocide, which of course are also wrong, it’s Israel’s very presence.”
He added: “There’s a mismatch between saying Israel’s very presence there is illegal, but then only focusing on the question of the settlers and the settlements. If the problem is with the settlements themselves, then the problem is with the state that establishes them.”
A government spokesperson said: “This is the biggest reset in the UK’s approach to protecting and securing the two-state solution in a generation. We have shown our commitment to international law and our refusal to be bystanders to further suffering.
“We have taken concrete action, supported accountability, pledged to galvanise the international community and acted with our partners across the globe.”
In response to the sanctions, the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, accused Miliband of “outrageous lies” and said the UK government was “systematically working against the state of Israel”.
