When I spent time in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, I witnessed first hand one of the clearest violations of international law anywhere in the world. It’s one that governments, including the UK government, seem to want to do little about…
I wrote a letter to the Guardian saying that a commitment to international law, not business deals, should be the cornerstone of Britain’s foreign policy:
In your editorial, you spoke of escalating Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank. Having just returned from a visit to the West Bank and Gaza, I saw at first-hand the horrifying impact of these spiralling levels of violence.
The law is clear: if a state transfers its own civilian population into territory that it occupies, this amounts to a war crime. Palestinians are losing their lives, their homes, their land and their livelihoods to make way for sprawling Israeli settlements that the international court of justice has concluded are in breach of international law.
We call on the UK government to ban all trade and investment with these settlements to ensure that British citizens and companies are not complicit in these violations and in the horrific acts we’ve seen in recent days. A commitment to international law, not business deals, should be the cornerstone of Britain’s foreign policy.
This letter was published in the Guardian. Read it here.