Activists Block Foreign Office Over UK Arms Sales to Israel

Hundreds of activists have blocked entrances to the Foreign Office in London to demand the new Labour government suspends the sale of UK arms to Israel.

Organising under the banner of Workers for a Free Palestine, activists blocked entrances to the department on Wednesday morning. Civil servants were unable to enter the department until the police moved in and arrested nine activists.

Holding a banner saying “Genocide Made in Britain”, protesters demanded Labour “practise what it preached in opposition” on specific policies related to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. They called on the new foreign secretary David Lammy to publish legal advice given to the government on Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law and to drop a legal challenge to the ICC’s arrest warrant for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which Lammy had pressured former foreign secretary David Cameron to do while in opposition.

Tania, an organiser for Workers for a Free Palestine, said: “Gazans are being killed right now with the support of this Labour government.”

“Pictures emerged of Lammy shaking hands with the war criminal himself during one of the deadliest weeks in aerial attacks throughout Israel’s violent campaign of genocidal collective punishment on the Palestinian people since October.

“Keir Starmer promised change, but while this may be a new government, it’s engaging in the same complicity in war crimes.”

An organiser said that the blockade of the department showed the government that “workers will enforce an effective arms embargo themselves”.

In the past, Workers for a Free Palestine has blockaded the entrances to arms factories across the UK. On May Day, the group shut down the Department for Business and Trade, which grants export licences for the sale of British weapons to Israel.

The new government has restored funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine and appointed Richard Hermer – a Jewish lawyer who is outspoken about Palestinian rights – as attorney general. However, activists gathered at the Foreign Office were sceptical that Labour would make significant changes to UK policy towards Israel without pressure.

Last week, backbench MP Zarah Sultana – who has since lost the whip after rebelling over the two-child benefit cap – tabled an amendment to the King’s speech calling on the party to suspend arms sales to Israel and drop the UK’s current challenge to the ICC issuing arrest warrants.

Harriet, an NHS A&E doctor, said: “Every day that the Labour government refuses to halt arms sales to Israel, more people are killed in our country’s name and subsidised by our taxes, and Britain’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide deepens.

“As a doctor, I can’t stand by and carry on as normal while the government – and a Labour government no less, which claims to stand up for human rights – arms the regime which is turning hospitals into mass graves, targeting and killing the workers who save the lives of others, who are doing the same job as me.” 

In March, Lammy called on then foreign secretary David Cameron to publish Foreign Office legal advice on whether Israel was in breach of international law in Gaza, and to “suspend the sale” of UK arms if the advice showed there was a “clear risk” that arms “might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.

 In a follow-up letter sent to Cameron in April, Lammy said: “We cannot have a foreign secretary dodging scrutiny on arms sales, which is a matter of enormous legal and diplomatic importance.”

 The same month, in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Lammy said on the issue of arms exports and licensing in Gaza: “Where there is so much public discussion and debate, and quite rightly British citizens asking ‘I hope we’re not complicit in that,” you should publish a summary of that advice.”

Despite this, Lammy has not yet published the legal advice, and it remains unclear whether he intends to do so.

When asked this week by Lib Dem MP Munira Wilson whether he would publish the legal advice, Lammy refused to commit, instead saying his decision would be made “with full accountability and transparency.”

 In May, an application made by the chief prosecutor of the ICC for arrest warrants for war crimes for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Netanyahu, was delayed following an intervention by the Conservative government that challenged the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israeli conduct in Gaza.

 At the time, Lammy accused the Conservatives of backtracking, by “U-turning on one of Britain’s most fundamental principles: respect of the rule of law”. Speaking in the House of Commons, he said: “Labour has been clear throughout this conflict: that international law must be upheld, and that the independence of international courts must be respected.

“Labour’s position is that the decision by the ICC chief prosecutor to apply for arrest warrants is an independent matter for the court and the prosecutor.”

While it was initially reported in the press that Labour would drop the legal challenge to the ICC, last week Israeli newspaper Maariv suggested that Labour now plans to continue with the previous government’s challenge to the application. 

In the Guardian, human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson warned that the US was placing pressure on Labour to maintain the objection, writing: “The US is not a member of the ICC, and expects the UK to look after its interests there.”