The Labour government’s suspension of free trade talks with Israel is too little too late, writes John McEvoy. The U.K. prime minister and Foreign Minister Lammy should be in The Hague.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in his office earlier this month. (No 10 Downing/ Flickr /Simon Dawson/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By John McEvoy
Declassified UK
The U.K. government announced this week that it would suspend free trade talks with Israel, as Foreign Minister David Lammy condemned in Parliament the “monstrous” situation in Gaza.
Three illegal settlers in the West Bank were also sanctioned by the Foreign Office. Those included Daniella Weiss, the settler leader who featured in Louis Theroux’s recent BBC documentary The Settlers.
“I find this deeply painful as a lifelong friend of Israel and a believer in the values expressed in its declaration of independence,” Lammy declared in the Commons.
The first signs of a shift in the U.K. government’s tone came on Monday night, when Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a joint statement on the Middle East.
“We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate,” they declared.
The immediate background to these developments was the escalation in Israel’s bombardment, siege, and starvation of Gaza, with the United Nations warning on Tuesday that 14,000 babies could die within 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to pre-empt international condemnation over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by allowing a minuscule amount of aid into the strip.
“We’re going to take control of all the Gaza strip”, he announced on Monday. “Our best friends in the world — [U.S.] senators I know as strong supporters of Israel — have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge”.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further, declaring the same day that humanitarian aid was only being allowed into Gaza “so the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes.” The goal, he added, was to “conquer, clear, and stay” in Gaza.
Still Complicit
Demonstrators in London on Nov. 4, 2024, calling for an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. (Alisdare Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The official calls for a final solution in Gaza, it seems, prompted the U.K. government to attempt to put some daylight between itself and the Netanyahu regime.
But reading beyond the headlines, it’s clear that Starmer and Lammy are very much as complicit in the Gaza genocide as they were last week.
While the U.K.-Israel Free Trade Agreement negotiations have been ongoing since 2022, there seemed little prospect of them concluding any time soon.
Indeed, Israel’s Foreign Ministry even said on Tuesday that “the free trade agreement negotiations were not being advanced at all by the current UK government.”
The Labour government has thus paused negotiations on a potential future deal, while pre-existing trade agreements with Israel remain in place, and the “2030 roadmap for U.K.-Israel bilateral relations” has merely been put under “review.”
“There are elements of that road map, particularly as they pertain to security issues and the work we do jointly on Iran, that would not be right to suspend, but we are reviewing it,” Lammy said.
Military Collaboration
Starmer visiting troops at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, Oct. 12, 2024. (Tim Hammond / No 10 Downing Street, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Which brings us to Britain’s ongoing military collaboration with Israel.
The joint work on Iran that Lammy mentioned presumably refers to Project HEZUK, a secret defence agreement between Britain and Israel which is designed to counter “the destabilising regional activity of Iran and Hizballah.”
Project HEZUK would achieve this, according to leaked Israeli documents, by strengthening U.K.-Israeli intelligence collaboration and increasing military cooperation, with the effect of deepening bilateral security integration.
Then there’s the spy flights.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) informed Declassified this week that the Royal Air Force (RAF) would continue to send surveillance planes over Gaza to collect intelligence for Israel.
The same evening, around four hours after Lammy’s announcement, a spy flight took off from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and spent around five hours collecting footage over Gaza.
The MoD’s press office declined to make ministers or senior officials available for an interview about this policy.
Last week, it was revealed that the Labour government had licensed exports of more military equipment to Israel than the Tories did for all of 2020-2023 combined.
These figures, downplayed by Lammy in Parliament as “clickbait,” were drawn from the government’s own strategic arms export data.
?? WATCH: Suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana asks David Lammy “how do you sleep at night” for refusing to ban all arms sales to “genocidal state” Israel
Lammy: “I know that [she] is keen on clickbait, but I’m not going to be baseless at this dispatch box” pic.twitter.com/JoqTv0oKgC
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) May 20, 2025
Lammy has also ruled out stopping exports of F-35 parts to global pools which supply Israel, despite those fighter jets being directly linked to war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The U.K. government’s lawyers argued in court last week that there was no evidence that Israel was targeting women and children or committing genocide so that it could continue to supply F-35 components to global pools used by Israel.
Paradoxically, they also claimed that while the U.K. government has a “duty to prevent genocide,” a determination that this duty has been violated “cannot be made until genocide actually occurs,” the facts of which can only be determined by the “competent court”.
Since it may take years for the “competent court” to adjudicate on Israel’s war on Gaza, the U.K. government has thus effectively relieved itself of any obligation to “prevent genocide” in the here and now.
Sanctions
Lammy with Netanyahu on July 14, 2024, in Jerusalem. (Ben Dance / FCDO, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Lammy also condemned Smotrich’s plans for “cleansing” and “destroying what’s left” of Gaza as “extremism,” “dangerous,” “repellant” and even “monstrous.” He added that the Israeli finance minister’s statements indicated “we are now entering a dark new phase in this conflict.”
Yet in court last week, the Labour government’s lawyers argued that Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir “have limited influence” over the Israeli government and their words therefore “did not reflect the strategy of the decision makers within the War Cabinet.”
Either Smotrich’s statements are reflective of Israeli policy, or they are not. The U.K. government cannot have it both ways.
Lammy’s apparent revulsion at Smotrich’s rhetoric only emphasises the Labour government’s failure to impose any meaningful sanctions on Israeli officials.
Former U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron admitted last year that the Tory government had been “working up” plans to sanction Smotrich and Ben Gvir, describing them as “extremist.”
What happened to those plans under Labour?
Ceasefire
Labour’s top brass could have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and meaningful sanctions on Israel at any point during this genocide – but it chose not to.
On Oct, 31, 2023, as leader of the opposition, Starmer told Chatham House that he did not believe a ceasefire was the “correct position” because hostages would still “be held” in Gaza and Hamas would be left “with the infrastructure and the capability to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October 7th.”
Weeks later, the Labour Party whipped MPs to abstain on a crucial ceasefire motion brought by the Scottish National Party, with Starmer admitting that he had privately spoken with Israeli President Isaac Herzog about the issue.
Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now dead, and the Labour government is belatedly conceding, with apparently zero introspection, that its approach was a disaster and played firmly into Netanyahu’s hands.
“Israel’s plan is morally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate and utterly counterproductive, and whatever Israeli ministers claim, it is not the way to bring the hostages safely home,” Lammy told parliament on Tuesday.
“Nearly all the hostages have been freed through negotiations, not military force,” he admitted, undermining the MoD’s own rationale for spy flights, adding that Israel’s military plan “will not eliminate Hamas or make Israel secure either.”
The Labour government’s suspension of trade talks with Israel is too little too late. If international law is to mean anything, Starmer and Lammy should be tried in The Hague.
John McEvoy is acting chief investigator for Declassified UK. John is a historian and filmmaker whose work focuses on British foreign policy and Latin America. His PhD was on Britain’s Secret Wars in Colombia between 1948 and 2009, and he is currently working on a documentary about Britain’s role in the rise of Augusto Pinochet.
This article is from Declassified UK.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
As the only justification for the state of Israel is a particular interpretation of Jewish scripture which also endorses the Genocide of its opponents no man made laws or morals apply to its Jewish citizens.
As the above divine exceptionalism does not apply to non Jews (pace Christian Zionists) the British ( and Western) enablers of Gazan Genocide are not spared the rigours of law and morality and should face both disgrace and imprisonment sooner rather than later.
The 15 year-long hunt for Adolf Eichmann, a former Gestapo chief, was successfully concluded in 1960. The press at the time made much of the event. Eichmann’s trial began April 1961. He was hanged in Israel at the end of May 1962
Later, the first and less well known Russell Tribunal was established to try America for war crimes in Vietnam (of which there was no shortage, of course) which really boiled down to support for the victory of that kindly, freedom-loving ’communist’, Uncle Ho. There have been five more ‘Russells’ to date.
In June 2015, while in South Africa for an African Union meeting, the former dictator of Sudan (and one of 15 on the ICC’s most wanted list), al-Bashir, was prohibited from leaving while a court decided whether he should be handed over to the ICC for war crimes. Was he?
More recently, President Cyril Ramaphosa was seen warmly shaking the blood-soaked hand of Hemedti, a one-time leader of the Janjaweed, which holds the dubious distinction of carrying out the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur. Was he reprimanded?
The answer to all the above is NO! It is futile to punish such odious individuals whilst ignoring the vicious conditions which made them possible. War criminals are not responsible for war, which is caused by the struggles between competing capitalist states over markets and economic resources. War will only end with the abolition of capitalism. The dictators of yesterday, and the dictators and leaders of today, with their frightening military machines, only reflect the preparedness of their workers to ignore the bloodshed of all the conflicts before, during and after the war to end all wars and still to die for capitalism.
Not correct about Eichmann.
There is no evidence that there ever was such a hunt.
German intelligence file: “SS colonel Eichmann is not to be found in Egypt but is residing in Argentina under the fake name Clement. Eichmann’s address is known to the editor of the German newspaper Der Weg in Argentina.”
“Germany knew Eichmann was hiding in Argentina in 1952” by Tony Paterson, The Independent, 10 January 2011.
It’s interesting of late witnessing a few heads of state distancing themselves somewhat, at least rhetorically, from the depraved and repulsive crimes of the Jewish supremacists.
These top political officials probably know better than most how dreadfully the Palestinians have been treated over the past 19 mos.
Lock Them Up!
Lock Them Up!
Lock Them Up!
Seriously.
And since I’m serious, I don’t mean sending them to that bunch of kangaroos in The Hague.
Why would anyone send a western leader to the court that is incapable of ever convicting a western leader? The entire history of these courts is that they target the enemies of ‘the west’, and shield western leaders. Dick Cheney did not end up there for killing 1,000,000 Iraqis, as just one example. Both sets of kangaroos have failed to act to prevent a single death of a child in Gaza. So, why on earth would anyone propose sending a western leader to The Hague? That sounds like the old George Carlin joke about the punishment of being sent to his room — where all his stuff was.
Netanyahu’s faux outrage at this announcement is your clue to the fact that this announcement, which is the equivalent of a slap with a wet bus ticket, is purely a sop to voters and some of Labour’s caucas who are ready to revolt. It is obviously scripted.
Palestine’s destruction will continue as a lesson to everybody what awaits for those with the temerity to protest (enslavement, poverty, liberty and freedom from surveillance). Real estate is more important than people on this third rock from the Sun.
Cynics live in fear and lunatic elites lack the imagination to create a more beautiful future on our Earth. But we do, Goddamnit.
Humanity has been around as a “society” for what, 7,000 years. And still, despite the fact that it has never, ever actually worked, there are control freaks who still have the delusion that they can teach a “lesson” to everyone who dares to protest their greed and insanity. I could make a very long list of all the times that such has failed as a Brilliant Plan for Power. So long it would make these comments unreadable. But, its easier to quote someone more eloquent in the English language than myself.
‘When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it – always.’ M.K. Gandhi
Clearly, without Israel’s defeat the bombing and killing will not cease. The Zionists pretend to listen to appeals to stop the slaughter, then turn their back, snarling “To hell with them”.
It is just plain SICKENING watching all these ‘leaders’ and countries express their indignation as to what israel is perpetrating in Gaza and yet…NOTHING CONCRETE IS BEING DONE other than more blah, blah, blahs…The epitome of HYPOCRISY.
Macbeth (Act 2 Scene 1)
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”
William Shakespeare.
“Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers”
“Desolation Row”, by Bob Dylan
I wonder which won the fight to be the Captain?
Pity a world where everyone is so uptight that they can’t picture tough fishermen from the sea holding flowers.
Entirely apt. Thanks.
As war criminals why are arrest warrants not out for them in civilized countries? Could the Scottish Government arrest Starmer, Lammy and Sunak?
And let’s not forget Tony Blair. But no-one is going to arrest them, sadly.
Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, not a completely different country. Last remnant of the British empire are the different countries that are included in the United Kingdom. The Scots have been fighting for independence for years. And then there’s Northern Ireland.
And Scotland was given the chance of independence and voted against it. I was astounded.