An Oxford University surgeon accused the British government of failing the people of Gaza by allowing F-35 jets with British parts to bomb the children on which he was operating, an independent Gaza tribunal heard at its opening session on Thursday.
The two-day tribunal in London, which is independent of government and parliament, is seeking to amass evidence of Britain’s failure to distance itself from what the tribunal organisers regard as Israeli war crimes amounting to genocide.
Chaired by the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and two British-based academics, the tribunal has been framed to look at alleged atrocities in Gaza, Britain’s legal responsibilities, any evidence of UK covert support for Israel and whether the government’s actions match any legal obligations to prevent a genocide.
Giving evidence on Thursday, Prof Nick Maynard said it was unconscionable that Britain had not ended its complicity in what he said were deliberate attacks on the children of Gaza.
“I’ve been in these hospitals, I’ve had unlimited access to every square inch of these hospitals and it is inconceivable to me that they are being used as Hamas command centres,” he said.
“This propaganda has been repeated by our media, been repeated by our government, yet there is no verifiable, remotely credible evidence to support these contentions.”
He said he had often provided evidence to the British government of the deliberate targeting of health workers as well as how the daily clustering of specific wounds seemed to him to show Israeli soldiers used the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution points to undertake target practice on parts of teenage bodies including testicles, chest and abdomen.
“This daily clustering of injuries to particular body parts was beyond coincidence … it was clear evidence of target practice by Israeli soldiers on these young teenage boys,” he claimed.
The Israeli government insists it does not target children or civilians, but says its task is made harder by Hamas, which carried out the 7 October attacks and still holds Israeli hostages, embedding itself among the civilian population.
Later, Dr Victoria Rose, a consultant plastic surgeon at St Thomas’ hospital in London who has travelled to Gaza three times, told the tribunal about having to operate on children under 10 without anaesthetic.
She also said the Israeli government is refusing entry to Gaza of 60-90% of medical volunteers. Israel banned medical volunteers from bringing in basic medicine or equipment into Gaza, and would sometimes at the last minute debar a medical team as they waited to cross the border from Jordan. Rose said she lost half a stone in her 28 days treating patients.
She listed a typical morning schedule in which she operated on six children with body parts blown off, from an 18-month-old with 15% burns to a 5-year-old girl with her arm blown off, whose sister had lost her left cheek and shoulder.
Opening the tribunal, Corbyn said: “The truth needs to be told and information needs to be provided and if parliament won’t effectively inquire into what is going on, then the tribunal might be able to do so.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, said the British government had failed in its obligation to end the occupation of Palestine, which had been declared illegal in July 2024 by the international court of justice.
She claimed UK government officials can be held individually responsible if found to have continued economic ties, arms transfers or intelligence exchange with Israel.
The UK government has claimed that a complex picture of information means it cannot judge responsibility for individual incidents.
Emily Tripp, director of Airwars – a London-based not-for-profit group – challenged this, saying her small organisation had detailed responsibility in 1,300 incidents of civilian harm.
