Critics of the UK’s role in the Gaza war are considering setting up an independent tribunal if, as expected, Labour blocks a bill tabled by Jeremy Corbyn backing an official inquiry.
Government whips are expected to object to the former Labour party leader’s bill in the Commons on Friday, leaving him with few practical options for his legislation to pass.
The Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, said the government saw no need for an inquiry, but 22 NGOs working on issues in the region are supporting Corbyn’s call.
The Islington North MP is arguing that a host of issues regarding the UK’s involvement in what he regards as a genocide by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have not been properly aired in Westminster, except through brief replies by ministers in written or oral questions.
The NGOs led by Action Aid said: “In light of reports of atrocities committed by the Israeli government in Gaza and reports of the UK’s collaboration with Israeli military operations, it is increasingly urgent to confirm whether the UK has contributed to any violations of international humanitarian law through economic or political cooperation with the Israeli government since October 2023, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases.”
They said establishing an independent public inquiry would provide an evidence-based determination of whether the UK’s actions upheld international law. The possible inquiry comes in the week that the UK courts threw out a 20-month legal battle to force the government to end indirect sales of F-35 parts to Israel for use in Gaza.
The judges ruled it was not for the courts to make sensitive political judgments regarding whether the risk of curtailing the supply of F-35s for use by Nato outweighed the danger that the IDF with UK weaponry was acting unlawfully in Gaza.
Corbyn’s inquiry would investigate what the UK did to press Lockheed Martin, the US main F-35 contractor, to give an undertaking that UK-supplied parts would not go to Israel, an issue that was largely covered in a closed court session from which reporters and some barristers are excluded.
In written answers the defence minister Maria Eagle said: “If the UK government were to withdraw from the F-35 global spares pool, it would effectively be withdrawing from the F-35 programme, meaning that the UK would not be able to operate its F-35 fleet of aircraft.”
The court case, although a comprehensive defeat for human rights advocates, helped shine a light on how decisions to suspend UK arms sales are made under current arms control laws.
The case revealed that due to the lack of definitive evidence ministers had concluded only one IDF military action in Gaza breached international humanitarian law.
The Foreign Office had subcontracted examination of 412 incidents, but Falconer told MPs: “We have not been able to reach a determination in relation to the conduct of hostilities due to the lack of sufficient, verifiable evidence.”
Corbyn has also been pursuing information about RAF flights – of which there have been at least 538 – from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus over the eastern Mediterranean including Gaza since October 2023. The UK insists these flights have purely been to help locate hostages, and not to assist the IDF in pursuing Hamas. It also says the flights have been unarmed.
He would like an inquiry to prise open more details of the UK-Israeli military cooperation agreement signed in December 2020. The Ministry of Defence, in a written answer, said the “agreement incorporates a range of defence engagement activity, including defence education”, adding that it was “not possible to release this agreement as it is held at a higher classification”.
