Click HERE to sign the letter
Over 1,375 lawyers, including some of the country’s most distinguished members of the legal profession as well as former judges and academics, have told the Prime Minister that there is no legal requirement to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
In a letter to Rishi Sunak – which has been signed by former Master of the Rolls and Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf as well as former Supreme Court Justice Lord Collins – they state that there is no legal basis for halting arms sales to Israel.
The letter was organised by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).
It comes amid a growing row about whether or not an arms embargo should be imposed.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said it would be “insane” to stop arms sales, with several other senior Tory MPs weighing in behind him.
Other signatories of the letter include Lord Dyson, former member of UK Supreme Court, Lord Macdonald, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Wolfson, the former justice minister, and Lady Cosgrove, a former member of the Inner House of the Court of Session, Scotland’s Court of Appeal.
Baroness Deech, former principal of St Anne’s College Oxford, and Lord Grabiner, former Master of Clare College, Cambridge, have also signed the letter.
They criticised fellow lawyers – including four former supreme court Justices – who signed a different letter earlier this week calling for an arms embargo on Israel.
The group of some 600 lawyers earlier this week stated that a decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had concluded there was a “plausible risk of genocide in Gaza”.
But UKLFI’s letter points out that this is incorrect as the Court merely held in its first Provisional Measures Order that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have plausible rights to be protected from acts of genocide.
Jonathan Turner, Chief Executive of UKLFI, said: “Rishi Sunak must not give in to ill-founded calls to turn his back on Israel. There is now a growing number of legal experts publicly urging the Prime Minister to ignore calls for an arms embargo that are based on erroneous legal claims and Hamas propaganda.”
Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who was the lead prosecutor at Slobodan Milošević’s trial at The Hague, has said that former Supreme Court Justices Lord Sumption and Lady Hale may now be “embarrassed” to have signed the earlier letter.
He told Times Radio on Saturday that legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg KC “has raised a point this morning which may embarrass the Law Lords, the [former] Supreme Court Justices who signed it. “.
The point raised by Rozenberg in his blog “A Lawyer Writes” was that the letter incorrectly asserted that the ICJ had concluded that there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza. Rozenberg pointed out that the words “plausible risk” appear nowhere in the ICJ’s Order and commented that if the ICJ had found a plausible risk of genocide it would have said so.
The UKLFI letter also notes that the earlier group of lawyers relied on casualty figures supplied by the Hamas-run health authority in Gaza.
THE UKLFI letter says these “do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, do not specify casualties caused by Palestinian fire (including errant rockets and direct fire on Palestinian civilians), and appear to have been fabricated, both in the overall totals and in the breakdown of men, women and children, according to several recent statistical analyses.”
Jonathan Turner, Chief Executive of UKLFI, said: “It is regrettable that so many people credulously believe and base their views on the casualty figures fabricated by Hamas, despite their source and in the face of several analyses by statisticians demonstrating their implausibility.”
Separately, the former Attorney General Michael Ellis MP wrote last week to the UK’s statistics watchdog calling for an investigation into the use of the Hamas casualty figures, saying it is “patently obvious” that Hamas cannot be treated as a reliable source.
The UKLFI letter highlights that the UK has no obligation under international law to do any of the following:
– Demand an immediate ceasefire
– Resume UNRWA funding
– Impose sanctions on Israeli individuals and entities where there is no evidence of serious wrongdoing
– Suspend the sale of arms to Israel
– Suspend the 2030 roadmap for bilateral relations with Israel
List of signatories attached – 1374 up to 29 April 2024.
List of Signatures
Text of the New Letter
Dear Prime Minister
Open Letter from lawyers dated 3 April 2024
On 3 April 2024, you received an open letter signed by more than 600 lawyers (“the Letter”), demanding that the Government take certain measures targeting Israel. We, who are also UK-based or qualified lawyers and legal academics, are extremely concerned by the inaccuracy of the facts and law in the Letter. We address a few of these errors below. Further analysis will doubtless follow.
The Provisional Measures Orders of the ICJ
The Letter repeatedly claims that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded, through its first Provisional Measures Order, on 26 January 2024, that there was a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza. This is incorrect.
The Court’s ability to issue a provisional measures order depends on a finding that the rights asserted by the party seeking the order are at least plausible. It is of course plausible that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have rights to be protected from acts of genocide. Thus, it is the rights of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that were determined to be plausible, and not the alleged commission of genocide against them.[3]
Crucially, the Court unambiguously confirmed in the same Order that it had not been called upon “to establish the existence of breaches of obligations under the Genocide Convention” and that it could not make any definitive findings of fact at this stage.[4] Despite South Africa’s request, the Court did not demand that Israel cease its military operation in Gaza in either the first or the second Provisional Measures Order.
Moreover, the Letter claims wrongly that legal obligations on the UK flow from the wording of the Provisional Measures Orders, even though these are legally binding only on the parties to the proceedings, i.e., Israel and South Africa. The Letter then goes further than the ICJ by suggesting that the UK has an obligation to seek the imposition of a permanent ceasefire to prevent the commission of genocide. Such an obligation cannot flow from Orders that are not binding on the UK and do not impose a ceasefire, and nor can it flow from the Convention itself in the absence of any breach by Israel.
Other inaccuracies and omissions
The letter relies heavily on casualty figures provided by the Hamas-run, Gaza Ministry of Health. These figures do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, do not specify casualties caused by Palestinian fire (including errant rockets and direct fire on Palestinian civilians), and appear to have been fabricated, both in the overall totals and in the breakdown of men, women and children, according to several recent statistical analyses.[5]
The casualty figures contained in the Letter also do not separate out the 13,000 combatants Israel claims it has eliminated during the operation.[6] The UN Secretary General reported that in armed conflicts in urban areas in 2021, 89% of the casualties were civilians, i.e. there were on average 8 civilian casualties for every combatant casualty.[7] By contrast, in the Gaza Strip the ratio of civilians killed (by any fire, including Palestinian) to combatants killed appears to be closer to 1.5:1 even if the Gaza Ministry total is accepted. This contradicts the claim that the allegation of genocide is supported by the high number of civilian casualties.
The Letter barely mentions the mostly civilian, Israeli hostages taken by Hamas and affiliated terrorist organisations, and fails to mention that returning the remaining hostages and destroying Hamas are the goals of the current military operation. It also makes no reference to over 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis tortured, raped and murdered on 7 October 2023, or the statements by Hamas leaders vowing to repeat the 7 October attacks “again and again”.[8] Failing to mention these crucial elements ignores the legal basis for the Israeli military operation, including Israel’s right to self-defence.
The United Kingdom’s obligations under international law
The UK is not obliged to take and should not take any of the specific measures recommended in the Letter:
- Immediate and permanent ceasefire
Demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire at this time would undermine current negotiations between Israel, the US, Qatar, Egypt and Hamas to secure the release of hostages and a temporary ceasefire. Disrupting this precarious negotiation would be liable to increase the suffering of civilians and prolong the war.
- Resuming funding to UNRWA with immediate effect
The Letter does not mention the current investigations into UNRWA’s alleged complicity in terrorism, which is the reason for suspending this funding. The UK should await the outcome of these investigations before deciding on future funding.
- Imposing sanctions on individuals and entities in Israel
There is no justification for imposing sanctions on individuals or entities without any findings or evidence of serious misconduct by them.
- Suspending sales of weapons to Israel
There is no justification for suspending the sale of weapons to Israel without evidence of systematic violation by Israel of international law.
- Suspending the 2030 Roadmap for bilateral relations with Israel
There is no reason to suspend the 2030 Roadmap for bilateral relations with Israel. Continuing the 2030 Roadmap would not constitute a breach of the UK’s obligations under the Genocide Convention in the absence of any breach of that Convention.
Yours sincerely
Signatories