NST Leader: How to stop the slaughter in Gaza

New Straits Times

a day ago

The unexpected has happened. Britain has joined Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Norway to impose sanctions on Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, both illegal West Bank settlers known for inciting hatred against Palestinians.
Unexpected because this is the first time Western countries have imposed sanctions against Israeli ministers.
The sanctions come with asset freezes and travel bans. In a joint statement, foreign ministers of the five countries said: "Extremist rhetoric advocating forced displacement of Palestinians and the creation of new Israeli settlements is appalling and dangerous."
There must not be any unlawful transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza or the West Bank, nor any reduction in the territory of the Gaza Strip, they added.
Britain has been under tremendous pressure by the British legal fraternity, including former members of the Supreme Court, warning 10 Downing Street that if London did not act against Israel, it would face allegations of complicity in the war crimes that Tel Aviv is committing in Gaza and the West Bank.
More than 54,500 Palestinians have been killed since Oct 7, 2023. The British government is also facing a legal challenge in the High Court brought by Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq and the Global Legal Action Network alleging that it is complicit in violations of international law, including the Genocide Convention, due to its continued licensing of arms export to Israel.
The indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians has turned the debate in Westminster into a highly charged one.
In a speech there on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories on May 20, British Foreign Minister David Lammy, referring to Smotrich's announcement a day earlier of "cleansing" Gaza, of "destroying what's left" and of Palestinians "being relocated to third countries", he responded thus: "We must call it what it is: it is extremism, it is dangerous, it is repellent, it is monstrous and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms."
The British Parliament hasn't heard such words from ministers for the longest time. Neither has the Foreign Office been questioned by its own staff as it is being challenged now.
According to The Guardian, four letters have been sent to top officials in the ministry expressing fears that the government had become complicit in Israel's alleged war crimes.
The staff's views are in line with those of the British legal fraternity, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel is committing war crimes. The ICJ even went further, advising countries to stop supplying arms to Israel to avoid complicity in Tel Aviv's war crimes.
Sanctioning the Israeli ministers is a good move, but a better first move would have been to stop supplying weapons to Israel, which Tel Aviv is using to destroy the very foundation of a two-state solution that five countries and other Western nations are pushing for.
But the five nations, especially Britain, must not stop the pressure on Israel until Palestinians have their own state. Any other solution is a recipe for a muddled Middle East.