Former supreme court judges add voices to calls for Israeli arms ban

Three former supreme court justices, including the former president Brenda Hale, are among more than 600 lawyers, academics and retired senior judges warning that the government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.

- Haroon Siddique, Eleni Courea, Patrick Wintour

In a letter to the prime minister, the signatories, who include former court of appeal judges and more than 60 KCs, say that the present situation in Gaza is “catastrophic” and that, given the international court of justice (ICJ) finding that there is a plausible risk of genocide being committed , Britain is legally obliged to act to prevent it.

The 17-page letter sent last night, which amounts to a legal opinion, says: “While we welcome the increasingly robust calls by your government for a cessation of fighting and the unobstructed entry to Gaza of humanitarian assistance, simultaneously to continue (to take two striking examples) the sale of weapons and weapons systems to Israel and to maintain threats of suspending UK aid to [the UN relief organisation] Unrwa falls significantly short of your government’s obligations under international law.”

The move by prominent legal figures comes as Tory MPs piled pressure on Rishi Sunak to act after seven aid workers, three of them British , were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Monday. Party sources believe foreign secretary, David Cameron, has push ed for the government to harden its approach to Israel but has been met with resistance from No 10.

Three Tory backbenchers and one former minister now in the Lords told the Guardian Britain should stop exporting arms to Israel after the airstrike, while the findings of a YouGov poll, conducted before the strike, suggested the government and Labour were out of step with the public, with a majority of voters – by 56% to 17% – in favour of an arms ban.