LONDON: British legal and ethical obligations to prevent a genocide in Gaza mean that it must take more forceful measures than halting trade with illegal Israeli settlements and imposing extra sanctions, the founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has said.

Omar Barghouti warned that proposed government steps to issue sanctions against individual settler groups or extremist Israeli ministers is a “smoke and mirrors cop-out and distraction” from the UK’s obligation under international law, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

This obligation mandates that the UK end all support for Israel, including arms deals, trade and cultural relations that, directly or indirectly, enable the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, Barghouti said.

It follows a pledge by UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on Tuesday to engage in a “comprehensive reset” of British policy on Israel in the coming weeks. The government is reportedly taking steps to ban trade with illegal West Bank settlements.

Miliband also told the House of Commons that the government is examining ways to prevent British firms “financing, constructing or advertising new settlements.”

Barghouti, a prominent figure in the Palestinian rights movement for more than 20 years, said the test for Western human rights law still lay in Palestine.

“In July 2024, the International Court of Justice said Israel’s entire occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and amounts to a violation of the racial segregation and apartheid prohibitions under international law,” he added.

“Dozens of UN human rights experts have said to fulfill those obligations a set of minimal steps are required: a full military embargo, export import, dual-use transfer and transit.

“They also said you have to end all trade, diplomatic and economic relations, and academic relations that enable Israel’s illegal occupation.”

Barghouti said: “Further in January 2024, the ICJ said there is a plausible case of the violation of Palestinian rights under the Genocide Convention.

“The ICJ decided there is a plausible risk of genocide that is sufficient to trigger third state responsibilities.

“But UK government lawyers seem to ignore that part of the ruling and say the court has not ruled on genocide.

“But the genocide convention is very clear — where there is a risk, the obligation to prevent is triggered, and how do you prevent a genocide? You stop enabling it. You end all forms of complicity.”

In response to growing talk of British sanctions against settlements, the Israeli Embassy in London highlighted a warning by Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar: “If Britain acts against the state of Israel, the state of Israel will act against Britain. We have the tools.”

Yet Barghouti said the potential British sanctions are “totally performative” and would have “no concrete effect in holding Israel to account.”

He added: “Israel has de facto annexed the occupied Palestinian territory, making it near impossible (to) differentiate so-called settlement goods and services.”

Despite an apparent lack of consequences over the ICJ’s 2024 decision, Barghouti said he still holds faith in international law.

“Humanity has agency to evolve and expand international law,” he added. “We in the BDS movement have been pushing the envelope of its interpretation … We try to hold states, corporations and institutions accountable to end their own complicity in genocide rather than just wait for the messiah of international law to come and save us.

“We definitely need international law, just as we need to maintain the ethical high ground. Both are necessary, but not sufficient. We need people power to achieve liberation. There is no other way.”