This week marks three years since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, and three years since the beginning of the ensuing war in Gaza. Three years and more than 74,200 people killed. Three years and two million lives shattered. Three years and the collapse of education, healthcare and the economy. For many, it has been three years of what they see as a genocide against Palestinians.
Since the ceasefire announced last October, the UK’s media coverage of the war in Gaza has all but diminished. Attacks continue, even if the pace has slowed down, and Palestinians are still suffering from its impact.
Amidst this backdrop, Channel 4’s recently aired documentary Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed has brought to light new evidence regarding the UK government’s internal response to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. As part of the channel’s investigative programme Dispatches, award-winning journalist Ramita Navai and producer Ben De Pear, reveal government records, including Foreign Office documents, which show the British government’s repeated failure to hold Israel accountable for alleged breaches of humanitarian law, while continuing to allow arms exports to Israel.
All weapons that are exported from the UK require an export licence, and these licences can only be validated, under international law, if the country receiving them is not suspected of committing war crimes.
What was new?
The documentary examines the previously unpublished findings and work of the International Humanitarian Law Compliance Assessment Cell, also known as the IHL cell, which was set up by the Foreign Office in November 2023. Its purpose was to assess evidence of possible war crimes and review Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law. Its assessments fed directly into the then Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s decisions on whether the UK could continue to sell arms to Israel.
What the documentary brings to the fore is that the majority of investigations into alleged war crimes by the IHL cell had the same two outcomes: that there was not sufficient information to determine whether an incident amounted to a possible breach of international humanitarian law, and that the Israeli military were still reviewing the incidents and thus could not provide a conclusive answer.
The methodology adopted by the unit was such that a breach of international humanitarian law could effectively only be recognised if Israel said so themselves. The system appeared to be designed in a way that made producing a result that violations were taking place exceptionally difficult, making it practically impossible to condemn Israel.
The programme further revealed how David Cameron kept the arms exports going despite the advice given by the IHL Cell. In December 2023, he was sent two assessments concluding that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was a possible breach of international law. Yet he somehow came to the conclusion that Israel was committed to complying with IHL, and that the UK was therefore not obliged to act, allowing arms sales to continue.
Even his wording is telling. The fifth assessment was no longer able to reach the conclusion that Israel was committed to comply with IHL, but David Cameron’s response was that Israel was committed to comply with IHL “in general” or “overall”. The language concedes that some conduct may not have met the legal standard, yet it was used to justify the conclusion that the UK was not obliged to act.
David Cameron was also responsible for moving the assessments, at his own request, from the Foreign Office’s Middle East section to his political office, resulting in a drastic drop in the amount of reports being produced.
Around the same time, aid workers including British nationals were killed in an Israeli strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy.
Two days later, Cameron signed off on the latest arms export approval to Israel. That same day he announced an urgent and “transparent” investigation into the attack.
It’s hard to ignore the duplicity.
It was only when Keir Starmer’s Labour government took office that the majority of licences to Israel were suspended, even though components for the F-35 fighter jet programme are still being exported from the UK to an international pool which Israel can access.
What is it missing?
Despite the title, the programme only really exposes one secret.
Although it acts as a brilliant historical record of the IHL assessments and David Cameron’s response to them, as far as an account of Britain’s role in the war, it is only the tip of the iceberg.
What the programme – or possibly the programme’s lawyers – failed to mention are the other ways in which the UK remains involved in, and arguably complicit in the war in Gaza.
The UK Ministry of Defence continues to share intelligence with Israel from its surveillance flights over Gaza. Members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) continue to train in the UK. Britain continues to have ties with Israeli defence firms.
Perhaps the subject matter was too big for a single documentary, but Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed missed much of this.
One thing is for sure, which both Navi Pillay, the international judge and former chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry, and Navai herself conclude in the documentary – the disparity between the rules applied to enemies and those applied to allies.
The message of the documentary was clear: international humanitarian law cannot retain its authority if it is only enforced against Britain’s enemies and quietly ignored when it comes to its allies.
Dispatches suggests that successive British ministers understood this and yet went ahead anyway and chose political expediency over legal consistency.
This hypocrisy must not stand.
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