The Foreign Office has failed to release an internal assessment made in June last year that reportedly concluded that there was no serious risk of Israel committing genocide in Gaza. It has also refused to disclose if an updated assessment of a risk of genocide has been made.
The rights group Amnesty International in June tabled a freedom of information request to see the 2024 assessment, but when officials failed to reply within the statutory one month deadline Amnesty lodged a formal complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. It also asked if there was an updated government assessment of Israel’s intent to comply with international law, including a re-examination of the risk of genocide.
An increasing number of legal experts, as well as two prominent Israeli NGOs, have recently declared Israel is showing genocidal intent in Gaza, but the issue is contested and yet to be determined by the international court of justice (ICJ). On Friday, the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, described the new Israeli plan to occupy Gaza City and displace tens of thousands of Palestinians as ethnic cleansing.
Ministers have been accused of adopting a contradictory position on the question of whether a genocide is occurring by telling parliament only the international courts can make valid assessments, yet at the same time telling the domestic courts – in a recent case brought by the human rights group Al Haq – that Foreign Office officials had examined Israel’s actions to see if a serious risk of genocide existed, and concluded Israel’s actions and statements did not create such a risk.
Extracts from that assessment were recently revealed to the courts by the government in witness statements, but Amnesty is seeking access to the full document.
In part of a document sent to ministers, officials said: “No evidence has been seen that Israel is deliberately targeting civilian women or children. There is also evidence of Israel making efforts to limit incidental harm to civilians.”
It adds: “There is no evidence of a high-level strategic decision, passed down through military chains of command, like that which was in evidence for the massacre and deportations at Srebrenica that were found in the Bosnian genocide case to constitute genocide (the ICJ’s only finding of genocide to date).”
Some of the bases of the assessment made more than a year ago appear to be outdated. The Foreign Office found there was no pattern suggesting deliberate targeting of civilians or civilian objects, the rough ratio of military to civilian casualties in the conflict was in line with conflicts fought in similarly dense urban environments, and the ratio of military to civilian casualties also had to be assessed taking into account Hamas’s systematic use of civilians and civilian objects as shields, the report said.
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It overall concluded that Israel’s pattern of conduct in the hostilities could reasonably be explained as a legitimate military campaign waged as part of an intensive armed conflict in a densely populated urban area.
Ministers have conceded Israel has breached international humanitarian law, but this is different from genocide.
More than 60 parliamentarians in a letter to the Foreign Office sent in May asked for any updated British genocide assessments to be made public.
Kristyan Benedict, of Amnesty, said: “The government’s refusal to engage with us on this raises the suspicion that the government has made a further genocide assessment, and it is likely to be different from the 2024 claim there was no serious risk of a genocide.”