112 Parliamentarians, including 19 Lib Dem MPs and Peers, have this week sent a letter to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Attorney General, calling on the Government to fulfil its promise to formally respond to the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion on Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territory. The letter states that the UK’s obligations under the ruling are immediate and “crystal clear,” warning that continued delays place the Government in breach of its legal obligations.
Issued almost exactly a year ago, the ICJ ruling found that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem) is unlawful, and declared that all states are obliged not to recognise or assist the occupation in any way. The ruling places concrete obligations on the UK, including to abstain from entering economic relations that help entrench Israel’s unlawful presence, and to ban all forms of trade with illegal Israeli settlements.
When the ruling was issued, the Government acknowledged its central findings and promised to respond in due course. But in the year since, it has chosen to deflect and delay, relying on procedural excuses and taking no meaningful steps to implement its obligations. The letter sent this week reflects growing cross-party concern that the UK’s failure to respond constitutes a serious breach of its responsibilities under international law. The letter urges ministers to honour their commitments, set out clearly the measures that will now be taken, and demonstrate that the UK will not continue to act as an enabler of persistent violations.
While the UK Government continues to stall, the unlawful occupation has only deepened. In the West Bank, Israel has expanded its illegal settlement project, with 57 new settlements and outposts established between November 2023 and October 2024. This has been accompanied by a sharp rise in state‑backed settler violence, record numbers of home demolitions, and the ongoing forced dispossession of entire villages. Yet the UK continues to permit trade with illegal settlements and allows the import of goods produced on stolen land, indirectly helping to sustain the economic infrastructure of occupation. Equally disturbing, documents published this week show that two UK charities have funnelled millions of pounds into illegal Israeli settlements, all while benefiting from tax relief. That such activity is not only permitted but effectively subsidised by the British taxpayer highlights just how far the UK has drifted from its stated commitment to international law.
In Gaza, Israel’s assault has been marked by systematic war crimes: the deliberate targeting of civilians, journalists, healthcare workers and aid convoys; the use of starvation as a weapon of war; and now a detailed plan to forcibly confine the population and carry out ethnic cleansing. The ICJ ruling applies to Gaza as part of the occupied Palestinian territory, and the UK is therefore under a clear legal obligation to withhold all forms of support that entrench Israel’s unlawful occupation of the Strip. Yet by continuing to provide arms and military assistance, the UK is not only helping to deepen Israel’s occupation but also implicating itself in the war crimes used to sustain it.
One year after the ICJ ruling, the facts are clear, and so, too, are the UK’s obligations. When the Government chooses not to enforce measures against an ally, it undermines the entire system of international law, signalling that legal obligations can be set aside when politically inconvenient. As the cross‑party letter rightly makes clear, the Government must immediately publish its response and take decisive measures to end UK complicity. Anything less would confirm that the UK’s commitment to the rule of law is conditional and further erode the credibility of a system that is meant to protect the rights of all.
* Lucia Messent is the Policy Officer for Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine.
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17 Comments
I suppose it is because we don’t want to upset the Americans and Trump in particular. It’s not just Britain however-its the west in general. Each nation is looking to it’s own continent. But where is the Arab League?
Great article. Instead of Israel being subject to great influence by the civilized western world on the rule of law. The civilized western world has been influenced by the barbarism of Israel, where the rule of law doesn’t apply and savages in suits are in charge.
British freedoms have been curbed, peaceful protest has been criminalized and our civic space has narrowed to accommodate Israel’s barbarism and normalize it by attacking those who criticize it’s actions.
I think the foot dragging is centred on 10 Downing Street where the PM has family ties to Israel. And to make clear, so do I, but it drives me to different conclusions. This Israeli expansion and occupation must stop
It was 40 years ago that Lord Carrington, himself thwarted by Thatcher while he was Foreign Secretary, described the West’s failure on Palestine as ‘an international disgrace.’ Little did he imagine the further depths to which we have fallen, largely inactive, largely silent as the whole structure of the rules-based order buckles under lawless behaviour. As Winston Churchill said of the League of Nations in 1946, it “did not fail because of its principles or conceptions. It failed because these principles were deserted by those States who had brought it into being. It failed because the Governments of those days [the 1930s] feared to face the facts and act while time remained.”
We need to remind ourselves of the ongoing descent since October 2023. Do we really think the nightmare is going to stop with suggestions of concentration camps in Gaza, and local pogroms in the West Bank? So my question is why is the Party not raising hell, instead of dropping the fate of Israel-Palestine from the September conference. agenda?
Our focus must remain on the plight of the Palestinian people, as does Lucia’s article, but she has also clinically taken apart any excuse the government might have for it’s failure to act in accordance with international law, the will of the British people, and any kind of definition of human decency.
However, the government hasn’t been entirely passive. Last month it made it a criminal offence to support Palestine Action. I unequivocally, strongly disapprove of anyone spraying red paint on aeroplanes, but if I were to express support for that action I would be liable for arrest under the Terrorism Act 2000, and could face up to 14 years in prison. It is also likely that I would be tried by a judge – acting without a jury, in case they acquitted me.
It seems Netanyahu’s war is rotting the fabric of the British justice system along with the lives and homes of millions of Palestinians.
David McDowall 19th Jul ’25 – 10:02am…..Do we really think the nightmare is going to stop with suggestions of concentration camps in Gaza, and local pogroms in the West Bank?
David, I think the horrors we are seeing now are just a a prelude to the forced removal of non Jews from Gaza and the West Bank..
Israel has always demanded that they be held to the same standard as other nations.; had Israel been ANY other nation, regime change and even a buffer UN presence would have been proposed before now..
Daniella Weiss, supported by Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and other right wing Zionists, predict that “All the Arabs will be out of Gaza and Gaza will be a Jewish area” She also states that “Greater Israel was given to the Jewish people by god and allowing non Jews especially ‘arabs’ to live in Gaza was a failed experiment and that they should be forced “to go to Africa, Turkey or Scotland.” Her plans for the West Bank are just as intolerable..
Recent events are convincing me that the present government of Israel is the failed experiment..
BTW.. I wholeheartedly agree with your bemusement over “why is the Party not raising hell, instead of dropping the fate of Israel-Palestine from the September conference. agenda?
I am more and more appalled by Lib Dem inaction on Israel Palestine. Their inaction is worse than the government as a core value is supposed to be civil liberties and human rights. What on earth is the rationale for not discussing the issue at conference and repeating a call for a ban on trade with illegal settlements. There is also the issue of entities with charity status sending donations to illegal settlements. Most recentlt Toremet sending 5.7 million to a school in illegal settlement of Susya. A debate on change of charity law is called for.
This is an international tragedy, but it is also a British tragedy. The calcified dinosaur of a party cannot move, due not only to geopolitical pressures but to its own toxic legacy. Labour cannot respond meaningfully to the International Court of Justice’s ruling on Israel’s occupation because of this legacy. It cannot criticise Israel meaningfully without reopening the battles of the Corbyn years. It cannot affirm the ICJ’s findings without exposing that Britain is already in breach of them. And it cannot take a position without alienating either its nationally aligned Atlanticism or its progressive base, which is a fault line that runs through the party’s history.
I agree wholeheartedly: What makes this moment uniquely damning is that Labour has no power and still cannot speak. This was a letter, not legislation. No arms embargo, no trade ban, no diplomatic rupture. Just an affirmation of the UK’s legal duties under international law. Yet even that proved too much. Not a single frontbencher signed. Not one public comment of support. The party’s front-bench legal minds, its internationalists, its human rights advocates – they are all silent. Their absence tells us what we need to know. Like every British government since The Troubles, and certainly since Iraq, Labour fears the implications of international law more than it fears international law’s erosion.
@PamelaManning. The window for emergency resolutions at the LD conference has not yet closed. So come on someone and submit such a motion.
The Law of Unintended Consequences… There were already enough laws to deal with the activities of the members of ‘Palestinian Action’ but Starmer bowed to right wing demands and declared it a ‘terrorist organisation’..
There has been a trickle of arrests of people peacefully supporting the aims of the recently proscribed group; however, this weekend, the flood gates opened and across the country dozens of arrests have been made under article 13..
This is a waste of police resources and this heavy handed approach will only serve to fuel more such protests.. Ghandi must have a wry smile on his heavenly face..
80 arrests today, including an 81 year old ex-magistrate. At some point Labour are going to have to find a way to make another U-turn & the longer they wait the more painful it will be.
Thank you Lucia Messent for a lucid reminder of yet another failure of Starmer’s Labour Government on the Palestine catastrophe. I did wonder why only 19 Lib Dem MPs and Peers but thanks to those who did sign. Thanks also to Anders Larson for reminding us that Palestine is a British tragedy too, eating into the institutions that should be acting on our behalf to do everything possible to halt the genocide. It is of course primarily a failure of Starmer’s Labour. The well evidenced account in Maguire and Pogrund’s ‘Get In’ book is that Starmer is personally blocking all attempts within Labour to act on Palestine. And none of his supplicant Cabinet dare object publicly.
The British tragedy seems also to spread within our Party. Along with Pamela Manning I am horrified by the report of yet another failure by the Party machine to headline Palestine in the Party Conference. Can this be true? Does it fail the ‘Middle England’ test? In spite of occasional spirited speeches in the Commons it fails to convince that our Party really does care and will find ways to act. Thank you to all those who have commented here. Please let us keep up the fight for Palestine, and for our own self respect – and at the same time for freedom to protest.
I don’t think any more damage can be done to Labour. Only 15 to 20 pc have solid support for either side To the rest ,as it is not our continent,it’s not our war. Cost of living and migration will always top their list of concerns.
Thank you for an excellent article with verifying sources!
Might it also be the case that our government, and other “Western” governments, are not speaking out and behaving as they should because of the influence and [possible] power exerted over them by commercial [self] interests?
The speech below by Francesca Albanese, U. N. Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian State makes this facet of the ongoing theft and cruelty horribly clear.
P. S. Ireland is introducing a bill banning the sale of goods from Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Might the L. D. leadership follow this practical move?
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/07/17/israels-genocide-economy/
@Chris Caswill – you mention the “Middle England test”. Middle England is outraged by what has been happening in Gaza – it is also outraged by 7 October, but does not see that as an excuse for what Lord Sumption has now said he believes a competent court would call genocide.
Having the courage to stand up on the Palestinian issue would be a vote winner, especially against the Tories who are weak-kneed in the extreme on this, with one or two honourable exceptions like Kit Malthouse and Baroness Warsi. Liz Truss was even willing during her leeadership campaign before the Tory membership to say that moving the British Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem should be looked at.
@Tim Rogers 19th Jul ’25 – 7:52pm…
John Donne…”No Man is an Island”..
” To the rest ,as it is not our continent, it’s not our war.”
But do they know it’s not “our continent”? The Israel football team plays in the European grouping and they’ve always been in the Eurovision song contest. Israelis want to be seen as European when it suits them but they wouldn’t want the same for their neighbours -especially the Palestinians.