More than 130 legal experts, including lawyers and legal academics, have called on British Prime Minister Andy Burnham to introduce wider UK sanctions on Israeli settlements, arguing that recently announced measures “fall far short” of Britain’s obligations under a 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion that found Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful.
The six-page letter was sent to Burnham on Tuesday, following Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s announcement of a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The measures prompted a scathing response from Israel.
"We note the Foreign Secretary’s statement that the sanctions regime targets illegal settlements and settlement expansion, and not Israel. 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," the letter read.
"It is notable, by contrast to the improperly narrow approach to the sanctions regime adopted towards Israel, the UK’s Russia sanctions are not confined to economic activity in occupied Ukrainian territory," it added.
"They extend to Russian banks, energy companies, state-linked enterprises, shipping networks, exports, imports, investment activity, financial services and other sectors of the Russian economy because those structures are viewed as enabling, financing or benefiting from Russia's aggression against Ukraine."
The lawyers also referred to Article 6(3) of the Arms Trade Treaty, which prohibits arms transfers where a state knows the items would be used to commit genocide, crimes against humanity or grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
The letter also called on the government to ensure that money raised by UK-registered charities is not used to support settlement activities.
Labour MP Melanie Ward previously said Israeli settlements had received at least £28 million in donations from 32 charities in England and Wales, as the Charity Commission announced a fact-finding inquiry into charities operating in settlements in August.
Ralph Wilde, a UCL professor of international law who has acted as senior counsel and legal adviser to the Arab League in proceedings before the ICJ, told The New Arab that the illegality of the way the occupation is conducted, including the establishment of settlements, should be distinguished from what he described as the more fundamental illegality of the occupation itself.
"Yes, the settlements are illegal. Yes, genocide is illegal. But even if there weren't settlements, and even if there wasn't a genocide, Israel would still be acting illegally because it doesn't even have a legal right to be there in the first place," Wilde told The New Arab.
"And that's a more fundamental illegality, because it goes to the very presence itself."
Wilde said the UK had previously argued that it was neither possible nor advisable to determine whether the occupation itself was illegal, maintaining that it could continue lawfully until a peace agreement was reached.
But he described Britain's acknowledgement last week that the occupation is illegal as a significant, albeit limited, shift.
"The big shift from last week is that the UK is now saying that the occupation is illegal," he said.
However, Wilde said Britain had essentially "just acknowledged reality" without following the ICJ's reasoning to its conclusion.
"They haven't followed through and said what the court said, which was that because the occupation is illegal, it should end."
Wilde argued that further action should be taken in response to the ICJ's findings on Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, including sanctions against Israel and individual Israelis whom he said support the occupation, including political leaders.
"There needs to be a complete end of any form of assistance given to Israel-military assistance, intelligence, or other assistance-because there's no way to be sure that that assistance is not, in one way or another, assisting the illegal occupation, and the UK is under a legal obligation not to provide assistance," he told TNA.
Meanwhile, another signatory to Tuesday's letter, SOAS professor of law Nimer Sultany, emphasised in a statement that "the elephant in the room is that the occupation is not a bug, it’s a feature."
“Israel’s political consensus opposes Palestinian statehood. Thus, ending Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, as determined by the International Court of Justice, requires immediate, effective and comprehensive actions by the UK government, not a piece-meal approach.”
The latest remarks follow international outcry over escalating attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian villages in the West Bank and an Israeli tender for 1,200 homes in the E1 settlement, east of Jerusalem.
The developments prompted Britain to announce a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, alongside targeted measures against settlements and those facilitating or profiting from them.
11 other countries, including France and Canada, subsequently announced similar measures.
Meanwhile, Israeli rights group B'Tselem said on Monday that Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank form part of a wider project aimed at making it impossible for Palestinians to exist collectively as a people.
It identified five interconnected tactics and policies in the West Bank: "violence, ethnic cleansing, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction".