UK Government: “I would not want to give the House or the public the impression that we have not taken significant steps in the course of the last 18 months.”
Last week the House of Commons debated a motion on Parliament’s “obligation to assess the risk of genocide under international law” in regard to Occupied Palestine.
There is no longer a question about the “risk” of genocide in Gaza, it’s a undeniable fact – as confirmed by the UN itself, the International Association of Genocide Scholars and countless other authorities. But both main political parties in the UK think they know better.
And with no proper parliamentary debate on Palestine since February 2024, all credit to Scottish MP Brendan O’Hara for making this one happened. In my own area Dumfries & Galloway PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) called on members and supporters to write to their local MP asking them to speak up for the Palestinians whose suffering over the last 28 months has been unbearable. I wrote independently to MPs John Cooper and David Mundell (both Conservative). According to Hansard, neither of them took part.
And here’s the thing. Cooper sits on the Business and Trade Committee and the Business and Trade Sub-Committee on Economic Security, Arms and Export Controls. Mundell is on the International Development Committee. Both should have plenty to say; both are answerable to us the public.
Some who did contribute made good points, but others displayed astonishing ignorance. Here’s a flavour of what was said.
Brendan O’Hara, SNP, in his introduction put the key question:
When asked, each of us will have to answer: did we speak up for the tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children who were killed; did we use our platform to actively oppose the forced displacement of millions of Palestinians from their homes and communities as they were reduced to rubble, and condemn unequivocally the collective punishment imposed on an entire population when the basics necessary to sustain life—water, electricity, food and medicine—were deliberately withheld from them; or did we, either by what we said and did, or by what we did not say and did not do, side with the powerful, look away because it was in our political or financial interests so to do, and give political cover and legitimacy to the Netanyahu regime as it carried out its genocide while our Government supplied it with the weapons and military intelligence to do so?
In his opinion no reasonable person could deny that “what we have witnessed in Gaza over the past two and a half years constitutes genocide. The Government have denied, and continue to this day to deny, that it is a genocide. It is a decision that the Government will have to explain, and with which they will have to live.” He said he wanted to focus on the mountain of evidence that there is at least a serious risk of genocide occurring, which should have triggered the UK’s legal obligation to act under the terms of the genocide convention, as explained by the International Court of Justice in its 2007 Bosnia ruling — an obligation that comes into effect long before any determination of genocide has been made by a court.
Peter Prinsley (Labour) said:
This was not a war of Israel’s seeking. The aims of the war were to secure the release of the hostages and to prevent Hamas from ever repeating their attack, which they had promised to do on many occasions. As the Chief Rabbi said, ‘If Hamas lays down its arms there will be no fighting… If Israel were to lay down its arms there would be no Israel’…. I simply cannot believe that it was the stated intention of the Government of Israel to completely destroy the population of Gaza.
Graham Leadbitter (SNP) was more specific. The definition of genocide set out in article II of the Genocide Convention involves specific acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. First, article II(a) prohibits killing members of such a group. As of January of this year, 71,500 Palestinians have been killed, including 570 aid workers and 1,700 health workers. That is not collateral damage; it is the destruction of a people and it is sickening. Secondly, article II(b) prohibits causing serious bodily or mental harm. “We know that over 143,000 people have been injured, with many maimed for life, and the population has been subjected to torture and arbitrary detention.
“Thirdly, and perhaps most damningly, article II(c) prohibits deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction. When Israeli leaders describe Palestinians as ‘human animals’ and speak of ‘flattening Gaza’ and then proceed to destroy 19 hospitals and block essential aid, the only reasonable conclusion is that there is the ‘intent to destroy’ the group, as per the definition. Even now, despite the UN commission of inquiry finding in September 2025 that Israel has committed genocide and Amnesty International confirming that the genocide continues despite the October ceasefire, the UK refuses to act.”
Andy McDonald (Labour), who co-chair of the Britain-Palestine all-party parliamentary group, said the UK’s duty to prevent genocide is triggered the moment a serious risk becomes evident. The International Court of Justice made that clear in January 2024.
The UN commission of inquiry confirmed that the ICJ’s provisional measures placed all state parties on notice of a serious risk of genocide in Gaza, triggering legal obligations on third states, including the UK. Yet in September 2024, UK Government lawyers concluded that there was no serious risk of genocide occurring. That defies the Court, the commission and the law.
Kit Malthouse (Con) suggested that
many of us are here because of a profound sense of shame — shame at the way the last Government and this Government have conducted themselves throughout this entire affair. Among the many shames that we will all have to bear is the Government’s reluctance to vigorously and assertively participate in the international rules-based order which we built to prevent exactly this kind of eventuality.
Time and again, the British Government have done absolutely nothing. From arms to intelligence sharing and diplomatic cover, we have continued as normal. I am left wondering what it is this country stands for, because it is not just on this obligation that there has been nothing. On the torture convention, even when the reputable Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has just published a report saying that Israel is running ‘a network of torture camps’, there has been nothing from the British Government, notwithstanding their international obligations…. The law is not unclear. The facts are not hidden. Daily, we hear Israeli Ministers boasting about what is being done in Gaza. What is missing is political will. It is about time that the Minister and his superiors realised that history does not just judge what Governments do; it judges what they allow.
Dr Rupa Huq (Labour) said:
The very risk of genocide raises Britain’s obligations under the 1948 convention to prevent genocide or risk complicity. There has been a systematic discrediting of the UN. United Nations Relief and Works Agency buildings have been destroyed, and Francesca Albanese has been accused of being a witch and sanctioned by the US. And what has been proposed in place of the UN? The Gaza board of peace, headed by Donald Trump, which costs $1 billion to join. The board has zero Palestinian representation, but Putin, the President’s son-in-law and Netanyahu all have seats, and its founding charter does not mention Gaza. The UK must not give that vanity project any credence.
Fleur Anderson (Labour) focused on trade sanctions:
There is a strong case for the Government to ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank. No further legal judgment is needed to do that. Although global attention has focused rightly on Gaza, settlement expansion, land confiscation and violence have continued on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed there, and economic activity linked to settlements risks undermining the UK’s long-standing position on their illegality and on the viability of the Palestinian state. The Minister has been clear that settlements are illegal.
The UK-Israel trade agreement already differentiates settlement goods, denying them preferential tariffs—postcodes are already provided to show exactly where goods come from. The Government should now consider moving from differentiation to prohibition, using legal tools already available under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, as we have done in relation to Crimea. There is legal precedent, and there is the technical ability to do it.
Sammy Wilson (DUP) insisted:
Let me make something very clear: I am on the side of the people who suffered one of the most horrendous terrorist attacks on 7 October 2023, when their citizens were raped, burnt, taken into captivity and killed in cold blood, and their killers boasted about it and stuck it on the internet. I am on the side of those people who since then have suffered the most sectarian abuse because they are Jews and happen to live in this country.
The fact is that Israel took every attempt to reduce the civilian casualties in Gaza. One only has to look at the ratio of civilian casualties in Gaza to those in Iraq or Afghanistan and the actions that Israel has taken, even putting its own soldiers at risk by leafleting, telephoning and using UN co-ordination to say when it will strike and withdrawing some of its strikes when it did. Who put the civilians in harm’s way? Hamas made it quite clear that civilians being killed would put blood into the veins of resistance. That is the kind of enemy Israel is up against. Even if there were an investigation, I do not think it would find that Israel was reckless in the way it has responded to a terrorist attack on its own civilians.
Adnan Hussain (Ind) said:
There is never any justification to kill the number of civilians that have been killed. This is a genocide, and it is not just the ICJ that said it. What about the UN special rapporteurs, UN independent experts, the UN commission of inquiry, and Amnesty International? What about Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the 600 senior lawyers in the UK, including Lady Hale and Lord Sumption, and many others who call it a genocide?
Steve Witherden (Labour) said he was
extremely concerned by the Government’s apparent move towards unblocking the already insufficient 29 out of 350 arms licences to Israel that were suspended in September 2024. It was the Government’s own assessment that there was a serious risk of British-made weapons being used in violation of international law, yet on 12 January 2026, in an interview with The Jewish Chronicle, the Secretary of State committed to revisiting both UK-Israel trade discussions and the decision to pause arms export licences, adding that the two matters were ‘intrinsically linked’. Such a claim is entirely at odds with the Government’s legal obligations under the UK’s own strategic export licensing criteria and international law, including the genocide convention. In addition to the continuous supply of spare parts enabled by the F-35 carve-out, last month three new F-35s were transferred from the UK RAF station at Mildenhall to Israel. Palestinians continue to be failed by our Government, and the Government must not renege on their arms export control criteria now that Gaza is away from the front pages.
If the Government were to weaken their commitment to international law in order to secure a trade deal, that would frankly be shameful.
Seamus Logan (SNP) was also concerned by the prospect of unblocking arms licences to Israel and the transfer of new F-35s from a British airbase.
I hope the Minister will be able to explain that decision, given the ongoing violation of the ceasefire by Israeli forces in Gaza, which is continuing the genocidal horror of these past two and a half years.
When talk of peace involves the perpetrators of violence and not the violated—not the voices of those who have lost so much on all sides—war crimes will go unpunished and festering wounds of injustice will lead to further conflict. The Prime Minister, as a former human rights lawyer, must understand that. Why then, given everything that we know, and all that we have witnessed, do his Government remain in a state of ambivalence on assessments of genocide under international law in Palestine?
Dr Ellie Chowns (Green) announced that the Green party has long been clear that the actions of the Israeli Government in Gaza constitute genocide.
Under the convention, the UK has a legal obligation to assess the risk of genocide, and to act to prevent it when that risk is clear. Article I specifies that the contracting parties undertake ‘to prevent and to punish’ genocide. By definition, prevention has to happen before an event has happened, or before it is completed; it cannot wait for a court case after genocide has conclusively taken place. Does the Minister therefore accept that the UK has a duty under article I of the genocide convention to prevent genocide when a serious risk is identified?
Brian Leishman (Lab) pointed out:
The awkward truth for many in this Parliament is that genocide has occurred in occupied Palestine for decades, and the silence from the international community has allowed and enabled Israeli Governments to persecute and oppress the Palestinian people. It has emboldened Netanyahu and his murderous regime to commit the genocide that we have all witnessed in Gaza.
Shockat Adam (Ind) observed:
Since the beginning of this latest catastrophe, following the horrors of 7 October, those of us who have been asking for balance, respect and nothing more radical than a justice-based international order have been castigated, and some of us have even been criminalised. We are now 26 months into this horror, and we are still asking for the same thing. We are pleading for the principles on which we as a country agreed following two wars—after humanity confronted its own capacity for evil and promised, ‘Never again’. We built structures to ensure that this would never happen again, yet Gaza has stripped away any remaining illusion that this rules-based order still exists.
As defined in international law, genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a people because of who they are. Measured against this definition, the Government’s position on Gaza is not cautious; it is morally incoherent. At least 71,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been murdered. We have witnessed this in real time, yet we are told to wait and not to jump to conclusions.
What of the international rules-based order? The International Court of Justice is hearing a genocide case. Advisory opinions have been issued, and the law is trying to work, yet when the International Criminal Court seeks accountability, which is what it has done before, the response is not support but hostility. Sanctions are imposed, and threats are made. In fact, our Foreign Secretary allegedly threatened the ICC’s chief prosecutor by saying that accountability would be like dropping a hydrogen bomb.
Florence Eshalomi (Labour/Co-op) noted that
genocide is not something we can recognise only when it is politically convenient; we must call it out, without fear or favour, whenever and wherever it is occurring. What we are seeing in plain sight in Gaza meets the definition of genocide. I urge the Minister to listen to the powerful voices from across the House…. because there must be a reckoning for what is happening before our eyes.
Dr Al Pinkerton (LibDem) warned:
The Liberal Democrats call on the Government to rule out ever participating in Trump’s board of peace. Reconstruction must be co-ordinated by the United Nations with the involvement of the Palestinians, who have been excluded from Trump’s proposals. Aid must be allowed in at scale and rapidly. Hamas must be disarmed; there is no place for a genocidal terror group to take part in Palestine’s future. The UK should ban all trade with illegal Israeli settlements. Finally, the UK must deepen its engagement with the Palestinian Authority following the recognition of the state of Palestine.
Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), Wendy Morton (Con) stated:
This conflict arose from the brutal massacre of civilians on 7 October 2023—the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history and the worst pogrom against the Jewish people since the second world war. If the current ceasefire is to lead to a long-term and sustainable peace, one principle must be non-negotiable: Hamas must no longer hold power and their terrorist infrastructure must be dismantled. Recent reports of violence between Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza underline precisely why Hamas cannot be part of Gaza’s future. Hamas govern through terror and repression and prioritise their own survival over the welfare of Palestinian civilians. The suffering in Gaza is directly linked to Hamas’s choices and their governance.
Much of today’s debate has focused on allegations of genocide, so let us be clear: we do not believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. That was the position of the previous Conservative Government and, to my understanding, it remains the position of the current Government. I hope the Minister will reaffirm that clearly in his response…. The Israel Defence Forces do not deliberately target civilians; Hamas, in contrast, embed themselves in civilian areas, store weapons in schools and hospitals and use civilians as human shields. Israel’s stated objective is to dismantle an Iranian-backed terrorist organisation that threatens its very existence; Hamas’s objective is the destruction of the state of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
It has long been the British position that determinations of genocide are matters for competent courts, not unilateral political declarations. That is fundamental. I ask the Minister to confirm that that remains the Government’s position and whether he accepts that genocidal intent is not abstract in this conflict. The Hamas charter and the language routinely used by Iran and its terrorist proxies call openly for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. Should we not be unequivocal in calling out those terrorist and genuinely genocidal ideologies, rather than misapplying that most serious of legal terms? It is precisely because genocide is the gravest of crimes that the term must be used with care, discipline and legal precision. The genocide convention was never intended to be reduced to a political slogan or applied without rigorous assessment of intent, evidence and context. To dilute that standard is not to protect international law but to undermine it.
I will conclude by saying that the Abraham accords remain a credible pathway to regional peace and that Saudi normalisation with Israel is central to that effort.
The Conservative party is clear about the future we seek. We are committed to a future in which terrorism has no place and Hamas are permanently removed from power. We are focused on what comes next: a safe and secure state of Israel and a Gaza that is rebuilt, governed responsibly, free from terror and capable of offering its people stability, dignity and hope.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, Hamish Falconer (Labour) replied:
To answer the question straightforwardly, the British Government have conducted an assessment on the risk of genocide in accordance with our international legal obligations. As I said yesterday, or the day before, from this Dispatch Box, we consider our international legal obligations to be of the utmost priority. I am confident that I, the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Government as a whole are serious about our international legal obligations and serious about the process and rigour that underpin them. I have confidence in that judgment not only because of the extensive scrutiny that it has received from the House, but because these questions have been tested by our own courts—most recently by the Court of Appeal in November and before that in September, when it considered the process of assessment explicitly.
Adnan Hussain intervened: “Our domestic courts do not have the right footing to test whether the Government have truly got this right. It therefore falls to this House — to us as Members of Parliament — to assess whether the Government are right. The problem is that we do not have the details…. Will the Minister commit to at least disclosing that information?”
Hamish Falconer continued: “The International Court of Justice has not yet made a finding of genocide. It has made provisional orders… It will be for the Court to make a judgment. It is, of course, for the Government to consider our obligations and to make an assessment of risks, which we have already done.”
Andy Slaughter (Labour) intervened: “Given what the Minister said about adherence to international law, will he just put on the record why the Government have not responded to the advisory opinion of the ICJ for over 18 months now?”
Hamish Falconer continued:
I will answer his question, but we are under the pressure of time. Over the course of the last months, the British Government have clearly made a fundamental change on their view of the legal position in relation to Israel and Palestine. We now recognise Palestine. It is in the context of Britain having changed its policy very significantly that we want to ensure that we respond to what is a far-reaching advisory opinion with the rigour and seriousness that it deserves. I know that I am testing my hon. Friend’s patience and the patience of the House with that answer, and I am sure that I will return soon to this Chamber, but I would not want to give the House or the public the impression that we have not taken significant steps in the course of that 18 months.
I would also like to bring to the attention of this House some of the recent developments in Gaza. These legal questions are incredibly important, and they have been considered by both the courts and the relevant Select Committees.
And that’s as much as Hansard gives us. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell spoke as expected but didn’t add anything remarkable or enlightening, so I haven’t included them here.
As for Secretary of State Falconer, what has he told us? Nothing of value. He wanted to avoid giving the impression that the Government have not taken significant steps in the course of the last 18 months, and he failed.
And as for the Shadow Minister, one is left wondering if she’d ever read the Genocide Convention. And if she continues in that role she’d do well to brush up on the basics of international law:
- The future of Palestine must be in the hands of the Palestinian people – not imposed under duress by outsiders.
- The ICJ has made crystal clear that conditions cannot be placed on the Palestinian right of self-determination. The Israeli occupation must end immediately, totally and unconditionally, with due reparation made to the Palestinians.
- The ICJ has ruled that fulfilling the right of self-determination cannot be conditional on negotiations. Who governs is a matter for the Palestinians only, without foreign interference.
- The United Nations – not Israel or its closest ally – has been identified by the ICJ as the legitimate authority to oversee the end of the occupation and the transition towards a political solution.
Also, she ought to know that terror was brought to Palestine by Jewish militia, which morphed into the IDF, and by ‘Plan Dalet’ drawn up at the behest of Ben-Gurion (who became Israel’s first prime minister) ahead of Israeli statehood being declared in 1948. This was the Zionists’ hideous blueprint for the violent takeover and domination of the Holy Land and the cause of all this bother.
I think Florence Eshalomi has the last word: “There must be a reckoning for what is happening before our eyes.”
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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.