'Gaza Tribunal' opens in London to investigate UK's role in Gaza genocide

A two-day public hearing titled the "Gaza Tribunal" opened in London on Thursday, aiming to examine the UK’s role in Israel’s war on Gaza and the Foreign Office's handling of the crisis.

The tribunal is co-chaired by former Labour leader and independent MP Jeremy Corbyn, and features testimony from former diplomats, UN experts, international law specialists, journalists, doctors, and others.

"Just like Iraq, the government is doing everything it can to protect itself from scrutiny. Just like Iraq, it will not succeed in its attempts to suffocate the truth. We will uncover the full scale of British complicity in genocide," Corbyn said in July, after the UK government blocked a public inquiry into its response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Broadcast live, the hearing comes amid growing pressure from UK civil society for stronger government action to stop the genocide in Gaza.

Sessions will cover events in Gaza over the past two years, Britain's legal responsibilities, whether the UK has provided covert support to Israel, and how it has met its international obligations to prevent genocide.

The tribunal will also examine whether British reconnaissance aircraft have shifted from monitoring Israeli hostages held by Hamas to supporting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, as well as the relationship between the UK Ministry of Defence and Israel's arms industry.

Witnesses include Mark Smith, a former Foreign Office official who resigned in protest at arms export policies; Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories; and the lawyer representing the family of Jim Henderson, the World Central Kitchen aid worker killed on April 1, 2024.

Other participants include Oxford surgeon Professor Nick Maynard, Palestinian journalists Abubaker Abed and Yousef Alhelou, and Israeli historian Raz Segal, who has described Israel’s actions as "a textbook case of genocide".

Organisers say they hope the inquiry will fuel public demand for a formal government-backed investigation into Britain's role in the war under both Labour and Conservative governments.

The UK government has defended its position, citing a ban on all arms exports to Israel except spare parts for F-35 fighter jets, a suspension of partnership agreement talks, and sanctions on two Israeli ministers.

On Thursday, Dr Victoria Rose, a consultant plastic surgeon who has worked in Gaza multiple times since the war began, told the panel:
"In terms of things that have been totally unacceptable during this war, have really been the number of children injured. I think UNICEF have recently estimated 50,000 in Gaza, and when you compare that to 2,400 in Ukraine, you start to get a picture of what's going on."

Gazan journalist Abubaker Abed described receiving death threats from Israeli media figures, which forced him to flee. He said it was only after leaving Gaza and witnessing "the scale of life" elsewhere that he realised how "suffocated, subjugated and oppressed" people in Gaza had been before October 7, noting that they had been "dying slowly" long before the current genocide.

"What you are seeing at the moment is an extension of what Israel has been doing in Gaza for the past 20 years," he said.

Israeli-American author and anthropologist Jeff Halper told the panel that fully understanding Gaza required addressing "Zionism as a settler-colonial movement".
"The very purpose of Zionism […] is to Judaize Palestine; to transform an Arab country into a Jewish country, to take its land, displace its population, replace its population with a Jewish one, and then normalise," he said.

The Gaza Tribunal continues on Friday.

You can watch the Gaza Tribunal on Thursday here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3unMeGSQ3g

You can watch the Gaza Tribunal on Friday here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezu5OozxzYM