As Israel expands its violent campaigns and illegal annexation in Palestine and Lebanon, the UK government has quietly closed the International Humanitarian Law Compliance Assessment Process (IHLCAP), the Foreign Office unit responsible for assessing whether Israel may be breaching international humanitarian law.

This matters. The unit fed directly into decisions on UK arms exports – decisions that are legally required to consider the risk of serious violations. Removing it is not an administrative tweak; it is the dismantling of one of the only safeguards designed to prevent UK complicity in unlawful violence.

From our work challenging UK arms exports to Israel, we saw first-hand how this process functioned less as genuine constraint and more as bureaucratic cover – a mechanism through which Israel’s relentless war crimes are laundered. The UK government has itself assessed Israel is not committed to complying with international law, and has made itself complicit, in part, through this deeply compromised system.

The façade has crumbled.

At the very least the IHLCAP unit required the government to acknowledge its legal obligations. Shutting it down signals a willingness to proceed without even the appearance of meaningful scrutiny.

At a time when credible allegations of genocide are before international courts, where civilians, journalists, UN personnel, and medical workers are repeatedly being targeted and killed by Israel in Lebanon and Gaza, this decision cements the UK’s abdication of its own legal duties.

Learn more about our work seeking accountability for atrocity crimes and read more about this story in The Guardian.

Photo: Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets Israel President Isaac Herzog for a bilateral at 10 Downing Street. Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street