Human Rights Watch published a formal report on 2 March calling on the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany to suspend all military assistance and arms sales to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in grave crimes. The legal basis: under the Arms Trade Treaty, state parties must not authorise transfers where there is a 'clear risk' of use to commit serious violations of International humanitarian law. Ramzi Kaiss, HRW's Lebanon researcher, stated: 'When war crimes and other grave abuses take place with complete impunity, they are likely to happen again.'
The demand lands on three different legal surfaces. The UK suspended some arms transfers to Israel in September 2024 over the Gaza campaign — a precedent set under the same Starmer government now in office. That government has since authorised US use of Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford for strikes on Iranian missile and launch sites, while simultaneously telling Parliament that Britain would not join offensive operations, citing the lessons of Iraq 2003. The ATT obligation exists independently of the UK's operational role: London must assess whether weapons already transferred to Israel are being used in violations, regardless of whether British forces participate directly.
Germany faces parallel obligations as an ATT state party and a major European arms supplier to Israel. The United States has not ratified the ATT, placing The Administration outside the treaty's requirements. Congress retains an independent mechanism, however: war powers resolutions. Senator Mark Warner, vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has stated publicly that he saw 'no intelligence' supporting the administration's imminent-threat justification for the strikes, and war powers challenges to the campaign's legal authority are active. If those challenges succeed, the legal basis for continued military transfers in the context of the current operation narrows accordingly.
The UK's September 2024 suspension covered only some categories of transfers and did not halt Israel's military operations in Gaza. The ATT entered into force in 2014 but has never been invoked against a major supplier during an active, expanding conflict in which that supplier is itself operationally involved — as the UK now is through its base authorisations. Whether the treaty's Article 7 risk assessment requirement can function as a real-time constraint, rather than a retrospective legal judgement, is the question HRW's report has placed before three governments simultaneously.
