The ICJ’s decision in The Hague also spurred renewed calls to suspend weapons transfers to the Israeli government, which advocates say amount to complicity and violate international law. That includes arms shipments from the United States, Israel’s foremost backer. The US provides at least $3.8bn in military aid to Israel annually. For years, rights advocates and a growing number of US lawmakers have called on Washington to
condition that assistance on Israel’s human rights record and international law. Yet, despite reports and
investigations that showed US weapons were used in Israeli bombings that killed Palestinian civilians in Gaza, attempts to pressure Washington to end the transfers or
determine whether the arms are being deployed in rights abuses have failed.
Among other countries, Canada and the United Kingdom faced growing pressure on Friday following the ICJ’s decision. Both nations are state parties to the Arms Trade Treaty, a UN pact that seeks to regulate the flow of weapons globally and prevent them from being used in violations of international law and human rights. It prohibits parties from greenlighting arms transfers “if [they have] knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes”.
The UK has licensed more than 474 million pounds ($602m) worth of military exports to Israel since 2015, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), and it “provides approximately 15% of the components in the F-35 stealth bomber aircraft currently being used in Gaza”. But on Friday, Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director at HRW, said the ICJ’s provisional order should push the UK government to “halt arms exports to Israel with immediate effect”. “There is NO question,” she wrote on social media. “The Court found a plausible risk of genocide & the UK has an obligation to prevent genocide & not be complicit.”
That obligation stems from the UN’s 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — commonly known as the Genocide Convention. The US, the UK and Canada are among 153 countries that are parties to the treaty. “If you’re supplying arms to a country where you know the arms may be used for criminal purposes, then you may become complicit in those crimes,” said Geoffrey Nice, a UK lawyer who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
“And it’s very hard not to become complicit after a certain stage of knowing is reached and after a certain stage of conduct continues,” Nice told Al Jazeera in a television interview on Friday.
Me being suspicious, Be interesting to see if that is what they do.
