THE High Court in London will hear a full case against the UK’s arms exports to Israel after a successful appeal brought by the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and the Al-Haq human rights organisation, which is based in the West Bank.
The organisations are challenging the UK Government's decision to continue to allow arms sales to Israel despite fears that British supplied weapons could be used in Gaza in breach of international law – an eventuality which could lead to the British Government being open to prosecution in international courts as an accomplice to war crimes as well as being a breach of UK domestic legislation.
According to the British Government's own export licencing criteria, government ministers must block arms sales if there is "a clear risk" that weapons might be used to commit or facilitate “internal repression" or "a serious violation of international humanitarian law."
READ MORE: Investments in arms firms are 'ethical' under new criteria, Rishi Sunak announces
Campaigners argue that both these conditions are amply met in Israel's destructive and brutal campaign of vengeance on Gaza in retaliation for the attacks carried out by Hamas on Israel on October 7 last year, which saw civilians gunned down under horrific and terrifying circumstances, and hundreds more kidnapped and seized as hostages.
Israel's response has been devastating and hugely destructive, both in terms of damage to civilian infrastructure and in terms of lives lost. Over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed to date, mostly women and children who lost their lives under circumstances every bit as horrific and terrifying as those who died at the hands of Hamas.
The Israeli response has now gone far beyond self-defence and moved into an attempt to neutralise Gaza by rendering most of the territory uninhabitable. Israel has been destroying health, education, food distribution, and sanitation infrastructure as well as turning huge tracts of residential districts to rubble.
Most of the population has fled, often multiple times, and more than 1.5 million people are now crowded into hastily erected and insanitary tent encampments in the southern city of Rafah (above). Famine and disease stalk the traumatised population.
The Israeli army is currently gearing up for a ground assault on Rafah, which could result in many thousands more civilian deaths.
Throughout all this the UK has continued to supply arms to Israel despite clear and mounting evidence of numerous war crimes being committed by Israeli forces, egged on by far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu's government and the far-right Israeli media, which makes no secret of its desire for the complete expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza and their replacement by Israeli settlers.
Rwanda deportations
The Conservative government has succeeded in passing its reality-denying Rwanda bill, which asserts that “as a matter of law” Rwanda is a safe country to which to deport asylum seekers despite a mountain of objective evidence that the authoritarian African state with an appalling human rights record is anything but.
The bill was deemed necessary by the UK Government after the Supreme Court ruled that their previous plans were unlawful both in terms of international human rights law and domestic legislation.
Rather than accept that they were in the wrong and abandon the inhumane and ruinously expensive Rwanda policy, the Conservatives decided it was reality which is wrong, and introduced a bill which asserted that in effect, up is down and black is white as far as Rwanda is concerned.
Throughout, Sunak has continued to rail against “foreign courts”, which he says will never tell the British Government what to do, when it was the UK Supreme Court which struck down the first iteration of the Rwanda plan – and did so on the basis of UK domestic legislation as well as the UK's commitments under international law.
The successful passage of the bill clears the way for the Conservatives' GB News pleasing Rwanda deportation flights to begin. Flights are expected to start within ten to twelve weeks.
The Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, Michael O’Flaherty, has condemned the Rwanda scheme, saying it raises “major issues about the human rights of asylum seekers and the rule of law”. The UK remains a member of the Council of Europe.
O'Flaherty, a professor of human rights law in Ireland before taking up his current post, said: "I am concerned that the Rwanda bill enables the implementation of a policy of removing people to Rwanda without any prior assessment of their asylum claims by the UK authorities in the majority of cases.”
He added that the bill "significantly excludes the ability of UK courts to fully and independently scrutinise the issues brought before them".
But none of that will prevent a Conservative government hell-bent on performative cruelty to vulnerable people in order to pander to the most base instincts of the immigrant-hating right wing of British nationalism.
It only serves their authoritarian purpose to claim that they are standing up against “foreign meddling” in British affairs.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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