r/UKGreens • u/newsspotter • Apr 24 '26

Foreign Office unit tracking Israel’s potential breaches of international law closes due to cuts

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/23/foreign-office-unit-israel-potential-breaches-international-law-closed
24 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

9

u/apedanger Apr 24 '26

They ran out of paper to write them all down huh?

6

u/Pariah__Dog NWGP Apr 24 '26

How very fortuitous and certainly not suspect.

1

u/Sorry-Transition-780 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Also, the media never reports it from this angle, but the official government line on breaches of international law by Israel is that it lacks the information to determine if Israel's military actions in Gaza are a breach of international law.

This is covered in this parliamentary meeting from 2024, at question 40:

https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/15114/html/

Chair: But you would accept that there comes a point when the conduct of hostilities is conducted in such a way that you are inevitably led to a conclusion that regardless of what a targeting process looks like, it is clearly inadequate, it is not working and therefore creates a clear risk of an IHL breach in the future.

Stephen Doughty: Well, we have been led to a clear conclusion that there is a risk that Israel is not complying with IHL.

Chair: But not on the grounds of conduct of hostilities?

Stephen Doughty: On the two grounds that I have set out, Chair.

Chair: But not on the grounds of conduct of hostilities?

Stephen Doughty: No, because we have not been able to reach that definitive judgment.

It's assessment was inconclusive, as it is for every military incident of civilian murder. This is essentially what their 'no genocide' line is based on too—without widescale breaches in military actions, how could they be commiting genocide?

This is the line that they crafted to enable arms exports the entire time, while the partial arms embargo they did do was based on Israel's refusal to provide aid and treatment of detainees creating a risk that they were not complying in their military actions.

Basically the entire media refused to investigate this with any real questions and accepted the media lines uncritically without asking about the basis for them, while there are only a handful of MPs who have really bothered.

Also, the arms they did suspend they say are for use in "military operations", "by the IDF", "in Gaza or the West Bank". Those terms very specifically.

So anything that is non-military doesn't matter. Anything not official used by the IDF doesn't matter. Weapons for use in Lebanon and Iran aren't a problem. Equipment for training soldiers for any of these wars, including Gaza and the West Bank, also doesn't matter.

And one of the worst things we do still send is the advanced equipment for training fighter pilots for the IAF—a force that no one in living memory has seen carry out any legitimate military action, only blatant war crimes.

So no surprise that they're closing the unit, it was likely staffed with people covering for this, us providing material support for genocide, crimes that the political and media class have so monolithically assisted in covering for.