The 240-page report was submitted on April 7, 2025 to the United Kingdom Metropolitan Police (Met) war crimes unit on behalf of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the UK-based Public Interest Law Centre (PILC). “We know that many – as many as hundreds – are participating in the Gaza war with the Israeli army who have British-Israeli citizenship,” PCHR director Raji Sourani tells Justice Info from Cairo, where he fled after his Gaza home was destroyed by a bomb on October 22, 2023.
“To make the UK prosecutor have no way to say ‘I don’t know’, we decided to give him a sample of ten Israeli-British dual nationals who are involved in the genocide crime in different parts of the Gaza Strip,” he says. “And we submitted all the information, with all the names, and handed that to them, in order to open an investigation and find out about these ten, and the others.”
According to British lawyer and PILC director Paul Heron, the ten include British-Israeli nationals and volunteers with sole British nationality and sympathies with Israel. Although their names cannot be released to the public at present, he says some are officers and some are ordinary soldiers who joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Specific accusations against the ten British individuals include “murder, forcible transfer of people, attacks on humanitarian personnel, actions against cultural sites, serious injuries, cruel and degrading treatment,” says Heron. The accusations relate to acts committed between October 2023 and May 2024.
Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken hostage. Since then more than 50,000 people, including 16,500 children, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
“You have a duty to act”
Asked about the importance of this case, Heron says it is not as important as those before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) but it is nevertheless important in several ways. “I think the first way is to test whether the British legal system, including the police, are serious about this issue, about the fact that international law is enshrined in British statutes and they have the power to act,” he tells Justice Info. “So the question is -- are you going to act? You have a duty to act, and we have provided the information for you to act. So it puts the British law enforcement authorities under a spotlight to act.”
“I think the second thing is really to continue to shine a spotlight on the genocide in Gaza,” he continues. “And the third thing is that we hope to inspire other lawyers in France, in Germany and across Europe to take similar actions. And hopefully, if we don’t achieve anything else, we make it clear that if you are an EU-Israeli national or a national who has volunteered for the occupation forces and you have been involved in war crimes or crimes against humanity, there is no place in Europe for you to come, because there is the threat of arrest and imprisonment.”
Crimes posted “proudly” on social media
“The soldiers with dual citizenship felt fully immune, so they were saying what they were doing on social media,” says Sourani. “And there was quite a lot on social media. We know where there were units and at what times they were involved in major crimes while serving in different parts of the Gaza Strip.”
The report, compiled jointly by PILC, PCHR and other lawyers, is based mostly on open-source information. Further evidence, including witness testimonies, will be supplied later to the UK war crimes unit, Heron says, adding that the report contains not only detailed evidence against the ten, but also a legal submission on how their acts qualify as international crimes.
“We hope that UK justice will progress quickly,” says Alexis Deswaef, a Belgian lawyer involved in a similar case in Belgium, who is also vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). “These cases can advance with information that is available in open source. It is the first time that we have so many open sources by the perpetrators themselves who put their crimes proudly on social media. That means our national jurisdictions can prosecute and convict even in absentia, so that if they go outside Israel, they would be arrested and delivered to the country where they have been found guilty.”
Belgium leads the way, will others follow?
Belgium is the first country where lawyers filed complaints under universal jurisdiction against nationals accused of war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Deswaef is involved in one case against a Belgian-Israeli sniper suspected of murdering civilians in Gaza. This 21-year-old man, known as A.B., was part of an Israeli army sniper unit known as “Refaim” (“ghost” in Hebrew). According to evidence gathered, there were also other bi-nationals in this unit, notably from France, Germany and Italy. So might those European countries also investigate and prosecute them?
Yes, says Deswaef, or at least the FIDH is pushing for it. “We have a group of lawyers inside FIDH who are working to coordinate strategic litigation on international law,” he tells Justice Info. “In this group, we are working on the fact that indeed in this Refaim unit, there are French, German, Italian, South African dual nationals”.
The Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Genocide imposes obligations on countries that have signed and ratified it to do all they can to repress the crime of genocide, he points out. “So when we have a bi-national that is participating actively in committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and maybe participating in a genocide, it is the duty of the national jurisdictions to take responsibility and prosecute these people,” he says.
According to Deswaef, “work is being done on the French aspect of the Refraim unit”, and there have been contacts with authorities in South Africa. “We have also asked the federal prosecutor in Belgium to coordinate with colleagues in other countries,” he continues. This is important, because “mutual inquiries can enrich each inquiry”.
Double standards and political interference
Palestinian human rights activist Sourani hopes the UK authorities will take the case against the ten British nationals seriously and go ahead with prosecutions. But if they don’t, he says, “we will publish the report, including the names”.
UK lawyer Heron says he is also hopeful. “My only concerns,” he tells Justice Info, “are that the Met war crimes team are properly resourced and that there is no political interference”. This case, he says, is also a test for the proper application of international law, without “double standards”. “There has been criticism that international law benefits the West rather than anyone else. And it feels like this is a test for international law. International law questions have effectively been levelled against Israel, which has historically been a ‘friend’ of the West. So it’s a test of whether international law can be used effectively, and if not, does it need an overhaul?”
Deswaef echoes these concerns. Asked if he has figures on the number of foreign nationals or bi-nationals fighting for Israel in Gaza, he says “we hear there are maybe 4,000 French nationals in the IDF, maybe a couple of hundred Belgian”, but there are no precise figures. “I don’t understand why our authorities are not proactively researching that, to know where they are serving, what they are doing,” he says.
“If bi-nationals joined Russian troops in Ukraine, I think the minister of interior or security would do an inquiry to know who is inside the Russian army and killing in Ukraine. Why are we not doing that for Israel? We have double standards with sanctions between Russia and Israel, and also with bi-nationals perpetrating crimes. And this is completely unacceptable. It puts Western credibility in the dustbin.”
