UK ‘weeks away’ from Israeli arms sales ban

Alameen Templeton

The UK is just weeks away from slapping an arms embargo against genocidal Israel, with British lawyers preparing to cancel all export licences over its open abuses of humanitarian law.

Kier Starmer’s Labour government is facing a groundswell of pressure from its supporters to impose a complete ban on arms sales to Tel Aviv.

The Conservatives under Rishi Sunak deliberately avoided “seeing” any evidence from its own governmental bodies that Israel was committing war crimes openly.

UK law bans the sale of weapons to a state that commits war crimes. The Conservatives repeatedly fell back onto the excuse that Israel was a “trusted partner” that had given it reassurances it was avoiding civilian casualties, despite the flood of social media posts revealing the grisly truth of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

That eventually led to a “revolt” in Britain’s top legal circles, with leading adademics, judges, lords and practitioners signing a petition demanding Westminster impose arms bans on Israel.

Some Labour backbenchers accused new foreign minister David Lammy of using legal nitpicking to try slow the imposition of the ban. The line coming from Downing Street is, for legal surety, current arms export licences to Israel need to be cancelled first, before an arms embargo can be imposed.

That’s likely to take weeks. Labour supporters were hoping it would happen this week already.

The Times reports UK Attorney-general Richard Hermer visited “Israel” last week to explain the Labour government’s decision to withdraw the Conservative government’s objection to the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants for Israelis, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Starmer surprised many when he appointed Hermer to his cabinet due to Hermer’s open opposition to Israel’s West Bank policies. He also signed a letter from Jewish lawyers urging the occupation to comply with international law in Gaza.

Phillipe Sands was also a signatory to the letter and is currently representing Palestine at the ICJ. He urged the UK to impose an arms embargo following a recent ruling from the ICJ urging the end of the occupation by ordering member states not to “render aid or assistance” to the regime.

The United Kingdom has sold $19.7 million worth of arms to “Israel” in the past year. Activists charge that the UK’s production of F-35 fighter jet parts has been used in “Israel’s” ongoing genocide in Gaza.