On 8 April 2025 JJP wrote to the National Security Adviser, requesting a meeting.
We made this request because we have increasingly come to believe that the Prime Minister takes all the important decisions on Israel and Palestine, acting primarily on the advice of the Cabinet Office. The National Security Adviser is in charge of the Cabinet Office.
The subject of our request, as in our recent lobbying letters to the FCDO, embassies and MPs, was the dangerous moment we are in, in which right-wing Israel finds a ready enabler in Donald Trump for its expansionism, its disregard for Palestinians’ political or human rights, and its willingness to apply unlimited lethal force to achieve its ends. We argued that the only way to prevent these policies from taking their course is for willing countries to tell this Israeli government there will be severe diplomatic and economic consequences if it does not desist.
Our letter is below:
Jonathan Powell 8 April 2025
National Security Adviser
Dear Mr. Powell,
We are writing to request a meeting to discuss the dangerous developments in Gaza and the West Bank. We are Jews for Justice for Palestinians. With some 2,750 members, we are the largest Jewish peace group in the UK or Europe. You can view our principles and the range of advocacy work on our website, jfjfp.com.
We are in a potentially catastrophic moment in which right-wing Israel finds a ready enabler in Donald Trump for its expansionism, its disregard for human rights and international law, and its willingness to apply unlimited lethal force to achieve its ends. Donald Trump’s support is evident in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition partners claim the war on Gaza is intended solely to destroy Hamas but Israel’s conduct of the war belies that. The Palestinian death toll now stands at more than 50,500, with more than14,000 missing, presumed dead. More than 110,000 are injured or maimed. Two million people have been displaced. The deliberate destruction of hospitals, shelter, sanitation, clean water and food supplies has caused a public health catastrophe. Gaza has been blockaded since 2nd March. António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, said “No food, fuel, medicine and commercial items have entered Gaza since 2 March.”1. More than 1,000 have been killed and more than 280,000 displaced since Israel resumed its assault on 18 March.2
The Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023 was undoubtedly a war crime and crime against humanity. However, as António Guterres told the Security Council on 24 October 2023, “the deadly assault by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum… the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation…”.3 Israel’s response to the attack, from it’s very start, has flouted the principles of proportionality and discrimination central to the protection of civilians in time of war, and therefore goes far beyond legitimate protection of its population. The authoritative scholars of genocide and holocaust studies who have spoken out publicly have come to the devastating conclusion that Israel is committing genocide.4
Netanyahu’s coalition partners, who belong to the extreme wing of the settlement movement, want to resettle an emptied Gaza, and there are clear signs Netanyahu intends to do so, with Donald Trump’s support. On 20 March, Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, made a thinly veiled, public threat to cut off US aid to Egypt unless Egypt agrees to take in Palestinians to be expelled from Gaza. A day later, the Israeli Defence Minister announced the creation of a “Voluntary Emigration Bureau for Gaza residents interested in relocating to third countries.”5
It is also clear that Donald Trump supports the long-held desire of the entire Israeli right wing to annex most or all of the West Bank. Therefore, the settlement approvals, the settler violence, the displacement of Palestinian communities, the attacks on Palestinian resistance groups, and the number of Palestinian dead, all of which have increased several-fold since 7th October 2023, can be expected to continue. In an ominous echo of Gaza, some 40,000 Palestinians have been expelled from refugee camps.
If the Israeli government is allowed to get its way, the consequences for the Palestinians will be devastating. The deaths and destruction will increase still further as the IDF uses live fire to force the Palestinians over the borders. The Palestinians of Gaza may well actually be destroyed “in whole or in part” as “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.6
More widely, allowing Israel to get its way would be a severe blow to respect for international law.
The only way to prevent these Israeli policies from taking their course is for the UK and other willing countries to issue a demarche on Israel that there will be severe diplomatic and economic consequences if it does not desist. The UK has taken part in such demarches over the past 20 years to prevent settlement building in the strategic Area E1 of the West Bank. Demarches were effective before and can be effective again.
We hope to hear from you shortly to arrange a meeting.
Arthur Goodman
Parliamentary and Diplomatic Officer
1. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1161996
2. https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-277-gaza-strip
3. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-10-24/secretary-generals-remarks-the-security-3ouncil-3he-middle-east%C2%A0
4. https://jfjfp.com/voices/paper-on-legal-characterisation-of-israeli-assault-on-gaza/
6. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf