British lawyers and legal experts will call on Labour to go further with its Palestine policy and increase sanctions on Israel at the party's annual conference, which starts on Sunday.
New sanctions targeting illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories have been welcomed by campaigners. But legal experts say that trade with Israel also needs to be banned or restricted to end the UK's alleged involvement in the occupation.
“It’s dealing with the symptoms not the cause. They [the sanctions] need to be extended further,” Tayab Ali, founder of the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians, told The National.
The Labour party will also be under pressure to hold Israel accountable for the killing of three British ex-servicemen in an Israeli drone attack in Gaza in April 2024 as they delivered aid.
Preparations began this week for an inquest into their deaths, with the coroner signalling that its scope could be widened to include the Israeli military and the soldier who allegedly ordered the attack.
Requests have also been made to the Ministry of Defence to provide footage of an RAF surveillance flight that flew over Gaza on that day, according to Mr Ali, who represents the family of one of the victims.
Mr Ali will speaking about how Labour can “turn its commitments on Palestine into action” at an event organised by the Labour Muslim Network at the conference on Sunday.
He is among the 140 lawyers and legal experts who signed an open letter last week that called on the government to do more on the Palestinian issue, and to make sure that its sanctions regime was effectively adopted.
The letter, whose signatories also included former lord justice of appeal Alan Moses and law professor Ralph Wilde, said that sanctions on Israel itself were needed to be fully in line with the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion.
“We note the Foreign Secretary’s statement that the sanctions regime targets illegal settlements and settlement expansion, and not Israel,” the letter said.
“The obligations identified by the ICJ in the 2024 advisory opinion, and the subsequent General Assembly resolution endorsing it, however, attach to the occupation as a whole, and the government has itself found that ethnic cleansing is taking place. Having made that finding, the UK government cannot treat that knowledge as absent,” the letter said.
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The lawyers said sanctions on illegal settlements would need to be expanded to include insurance and reinsurance, logistics and technical support among other sectors.
Minister for the Middle East Stephen Doughty will answer questions about the Labour government’s regional policy, alongside Emily Thornberry who chairs parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and policy adviser Salman Shaikh at the conference.
The event, on Sunday and organised by the Council for Arab British Understanding and British charity Action for Humanity, is also expected to address the new sanctions policy and its perceived shortcomings.
The UK led a 12-country ban on trade with illegal settlements earlier this month and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband described the actions of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank as ethnic cleansing. This followed a landmark decision by the government under former prime minister Keir Starmer to recognise the Palestinian state.
Mr Miliband reiterated his commitment to pressuring Israel at the UN General Assembly this week, with more action needed to support a peace plan and humanitarian relief in Gaza. “These are necessary steps, but they are not sufficient,” he told his counterparts at the UN council.
“The biggest danger we face is in a year’s time, we are sitting here again talking about the importance of the two-state solution and the facts on the ground that only got worse,” he said.
But Mr Miliband has also stressed that trade with Israel itself would continue, as part of the government’s support for a two-state solution. This has put him at odds with grass roots campaigners, including the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement.
“We will continue to support important and valued trade with green line Israel precisely because we support the two-state solution, including security and prosperity for Israel,” he said as he announced the sanctions to parliament.
“For this reason, I wholeheartedly oppose the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions or BDS campaign,” he added.
There is also pressure on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to overturn a ban on the proscribed group Palestine Action.
The group was designated a terrorist organisation after members broke into a British military airbase and damaged two planes, alongside other demonstrations targeting companies linked to an Israeli arms manufacturer.
Hundreds of people are likely to attend a protest outside the Labour conference in Liverpool to defy the ban, which could lead to their arrest under the Terrorism Act, according to campaign group Defend Our Juries, which is organising the demonstration.
Human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield KC and Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori will send a video message to Mr Burnham calling on the ban to be lifted.
“We will be peacefully sitting outside the Labour conference because if Prime Minister Andy Burnham means what he says, that he plans to end Britain's complicity in Israel's horrific crimes, then he would stop the arrests of people demonstrating against the genocide,” a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said.
