Responding to the Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s remarks on X today saying that an Israel Defense Forces investigation into Israel’s attack on a refugee camp in Rafah on Sunday should be “swift, comprehensive and transparent”, Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said:

“You’d have to be totally detached from reality to expect that the IDF will adequately investigate Sunday’s attack.

“David Cameron should drop the pretence that it can be left to the Israeli authorities to undertake an impartial investigation of whether they themselves have breached international law.

“There is an alarming sense that the UK government is - by being disingenuous at best - supporting a wall of impunity protecting Israeli forces when they carry out human rights violations.  

“There’s a decades-long pattern of the Israeli authorities denying responsibility for mass atrocities committed by their forces, issuing false or misleading accounts, and then - and only under international pressure - carrying out superficial ‘investigations’ which only entrench the overall illegal situation.

“The Foreign Secretary must get behind efforts by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice to properly examine the growing catalogue of Israeli atrocities in Gaza.    

“It should have happened months ago, but the UK should now halt all arms transfers to Israel. 

“With every lacklustre diplomatic remark on suspected Israeli war crimes, the UK risks ever-deeper complicity with possible Israeli genocide in Gaza as well as its wider system of apartheid against the Palestinian people.”