博客

A deepening political firestorm has engulfed the UK Labour Party after former Health Secretary Wes Streeting publicly accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of dismissing detailed evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, triggering accusations of deception, hypocrisy, and opportunism from across the political and activist spectrum.

In a revealing interview with the News Agents podcast, Streeting, who stepped down from his cabinet post last month, claimed that when he circulated a dossier of testimony collected from British doctors who had worked in Gaza to fellow cabinet members, Starmer immediately questioned his motives, suggesting the move was a deliberate attempt to leak the document for political gain. Streeting pushed back against this characterization, noting that he never released the dossier to the public until this week, when private messages related to the document were made public, undermining Downing Street’s claims that he intended to leak it.

Streeting explained his decision to circulate the dossier by saying he left meetings with visiting British doctors deeply distressed by their accounts, which included serious, credible allegations of widespread war crimes in Gaza. He argued that the United Kingdom holds both a moral and a legal obligation to respond to these allegations, rather than ignoring them. The existence of the dossier first came to light this week, when private messages from Peter Mandelson, the disgraced veteran New Labour figure and former UK ambassador to the US, were published. In the messages, Mandelson, who has long been a mentor to Streeting, dismissed Streeting’s calls for sanctions against Israel over alleged war crimes as “wild” and “hysterical”, further deriding the former health secretary’s initiative as “pathetic” and claiming he was suffering from an early midlife crisis. Cabinet minister Pat McFadden, another centre-right Labour figure aligned with Starmer and Mandelson, confirmed in the messages that Streeting had circulated the dossier and accompanying video footage to the full cabinet ahead of a scheduled meeting.

Since Streeting’s public claims emerged, multiple parties have questioned both the accuracy of his account and his underlying motives, including British Palestinian medical professionals, Labour Party insiders, and Palestine solidarity campaigners. Most notably, Ghassan Abu Sittah, a prominent British Palestinian surgeon who has worked extensively treating casualties in Gaza, has directly refuted Streeting’s claim that he met with British doctors who collected the dossier’s evidence. Abu Sittah stated that neither he nor any British doctor he knows who has served in Gaza has ever met with Streeting, calling the former minister’s claims outright lies. He also condemned Streeting as a core part of the same political apparatus led by Starmer that has enabled what he describes as genocide in Gaza, pointing out that the party has suppressed public outrage and censored dissenting voices over the last two and a half years of the conflict.

Abu Sittah further accused Streeting of pressuring the UK General Medical Council to launch what he called a “McCarthyite witch hunt” against doctors who have publicly spoken out against Israeli actions in Gaza. Streeting, while still serving as Health Secretary, supported new regulatory rules that make it easier for medical watchdogs to suspend or strike off doctors accused of antisemitism or racism over their pro-Palestine advocacy. Abu Sittah himself was reported to the GMC by pro-Israel group UK Lawyers for Israel, though independent tribunals have twice ruled that no disciplinary action is warranted.

Critics also point to longstanding rumors that Streeting is positioning himself for a future leadership challenge to likely successor Andy Burnham, should Burnham win the upcoming Makerfield by-election and mount a challenge to Starmer. Streeting also faced tight re-election in his own Ilford North constituency in 2024, where British Palestinian independent candidate Leanne Mohamad came within just 528 votes of unseating him, driven largely by public anger over Streeting’s pro-Israel stances. Records also show Streeting has received significant campaign donations from prominent pro-Israel figures.

Streeting acknowledged in his interview that Starmer’s controversial LBC interview, in which the prime minister claimed Israel had a right to cut off water and electricity to civilian communities in Gaza, nearly cost him his seat in the 2024 general election. Despite his criticism of Starmer’s slow, insufficient response to the Gaza crisis, Streeting has stopped short of describing Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide, a position that has drawn further criticism from activists. The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 73,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, with nearly the entire enclave’s infrastructure destroyed. Streeting told the podcast he rejects the use of the term genocide as an ideological litmus test for concern about Palestinian lives, claiming he has met with survivors of both the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli offensive, and that he values the lives of all Israelis and Palestinians equally. He also described Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization in the UK, as “evil and vindictive”.

Activist groups have rejected Streeting’s framing, arguing that his belated public criticism is too little, too late, and that his past actions as a cabinet member in Starmer’s government make his current claims disingenuous. Palestine Solidarity Campaign deputy director Peter Leary argued that Streeting should not need a leadership race to find his voice on Israeli atrocities, and that if he is serious about atoning for his role in enabling Israel’s actions, he should back immediate, comprehensive sanctions including a full arms embargo on Israel — a step Streeting has so far refused to take. Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, added that Streeting was a sitting cabinet minister while the humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in Gaza, and that holding private discussions with Starmer is not enough to absolve him; he should either have forced a policy change or resigned immediately in protest. Dearden also noted that Andy Burnham, the likely front-runner to succeed Starmer, has similarly refused to take a clear stance, saying only that he does not know whether genocide is occurring in Gaza.

One former senior Labour official, who has a long record of criticizing Starmer’s leadership, summed up the widespread anger at Streeting, calling him a “lying toad”. As of publication, Middle East Eye has reached out to Streeting’s office for a response to the allegations, but has not received a reply.

As the International Criminal Court (ICC) approaches a critical vote that will decide the future of its chief prosecutor Karim Khan, Norway’s deputy foreign minister Andreas Kravik is calling on member states to prioritize established procedural rules to prevent harmful perceptions that the review process has been politicized. In an exclusive interview with Middle East Eye (MEE) conducted ahead of the Monday voting deadline for the ICC Assembly of States Parties (ASP) Bureau, Kravik emphasized that institutional respect for pre-set protocols for investigating misconduct allegations is non-negotiable to protect the court’s global integrity.

The unfolding controversy stems from sexual misconduct allegations brought against Khan in May 2024, which the prosecutor has repeatedly and forcefully denied. After the original complainant declined to cooperate with the ICC’s internal investigative body, the ASP commissioned an independent UN-led probe, whose findings were then passed to a three-judge panel appointed by the 21-member ASP Bureau for a formal advisory review. In March, MEE reported that the judge’s panel reached a unanimous conclusion: the UN investigation had failed to produce evidence confirming any wrongdoing by Khan. In a striking departure from standard process, however, a majority of Bureau members voted weeks later to disregard the panel’s assessment, opening the door to a finding of serious misconduct against Khan.

Legal experts have already warned that the Bureau’s rejection of the independent judges’ advisory opinion creates significant risk that the entire misconduct inquiry will be seen as politically motivated, a threat to the court’s legitimacy that Norway says it cannot accept.

“What we have said is that the ICC needs to look at this case in conformity with the procedures that have been established for examining such allegations of misconduct,” Kravik told MEE during the interview at the Norwegian foreign ministry in Oslo. “Because otherwise, there will be at least a perception of politicisation of the process. And that would hurt the integrity of the court. That’s something that we cannot afford, especially in this time when the court is under real pressure by other states and where certain states are trying, at the best of their ability, to portray the court as a politicised entity not operating in conformity with core principles of international law.”

Norway has been a member of the ICC since the court’s founding under the Rome Statute in 2002, but it holds no seat on the current ASP Bureau. Kravik confirmed that Norway has not been granted access to the highly confidential UN and judicial panel reports, and is not privy to closed-door Bureau deliberations. Even so, based on credible public and off-the-record briefings on the probe’s outcomes, Kravik said the judges’ independent conclusion should carry full legal weight in the decision-making process for both the Bureau and the full 125-member ASP.

“We haven’t seen the full reports. But we understand that there has been an investigation by the UN entity responsible for carrying out such investigations,” Kravik shared in a forthcoming episode of MEE’s *Expert Witness* podcast. “The conclusions of that report have been transferred to a legal panel comprising three judges, and they have looked at it, and their conclusion is that there are no grounds for taking certain actions against the prosecutor, at least in terms of alleviating him from his responsibilities as prosecutor. From my vantage point, without getting ahead of the curve, it seems that that is a sensible conclusion.”

Kravik stressed that Norway will make a final, fact-based determination on the matter if the vote advances to the full ASP, but that procedural integrity remains the country’s top priority. “For us, the most important thing here is that the procedures that have been established are respected and that all individuals, also the prosecutor, are entitled to the judicial safeguards enshrined in those judicial guarantees that are giving guidance to these processes,” he added.

If the Bureau ultimately recommends a finding of serious misconduct against Khan, the full 125-member ASP will hold two consecutive votes: first to uphold the misconduct finding, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass, and a second vote to decide whether to remove Khan from office permanently. The ongoing misconduct probe has plunged the court into an unprecedented state of institutional uncertainty, with persistent media leaks about the unproven allegations further eroding stability around Khan’s leadership.

Khan has already made clear that if the ASP votes to remove him, he will file an appeal with the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILOAT), the independent body that handles employment-related appeals from ICC staff. Last month, former International Court of Justice judge Abdul Koroma issued a legal opinion shared with all ICC member states warning that the ILOAT could order Khan’s reinstatement and order the ICC to pay up to €1.5 million ($1.74 million) in damages if his removal is found to be improperly justified.

The controversy surrounding Khan comes against a highly charged geopolitical backdrop: the prosecutor’s ongoing war crimes investigation into Israeli officials over alleged atrocities in Gaza has already drawn intense pushback from the United States and its allies, who have sought to disrupt the ICC’s work. Elected as ICC chief prosecutor by the ASP in February 2021, the British barrister has overseen investigations into alleged serious international crimes committed by leaders across the globe, securing arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Myanmar’s junta leadership, and Taliban officials in Afghanistan. None of the US, Russia, or Israel are ICC member states, but the court holds jurisdiction over crimes committed by their nationals on the territory of ICC member states.

In 2024, the Trump administration imposed retaliatory economic sanctions on Khan over his investigative work, measures that were later expanded to target two deputy prosecutors, eight ICC judges, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, and multiple Palestinian NGOs that submitted evidence to the court. Russian courts have also issued an in absentia arrest warrant for Khan in retaliation for his work.

In his interview with MEE, Kravik reaffirmed Norway’s unwavering support for the ICC and its commitment to enforcing all outstanding arrest warrants, including the one issued for Netanyahu. “The fact that some third states who aren’t party to the court have decided to sanction court officials for just doing their jobs is unconscionable,” he said. “We are in close discussions with our European partners, but also partners beyond Europe, about how we should oppose these actions taken primarily by the US. As a state party, we are committed to doing everything we can to ensure that those who are working for the court can do so without being subjected to sanctions or any other measures that try to prevent them from carrying out their functions under the court’s mandate.”

The contested Himalayan region of Kashmir, split between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan since their 1947 independence from British rule, has entered a new phase of political unrest following a government crackdown on a prominent opposition group. Officials and witness statements confirm that Pakistani Kashmir police took into custody dozens of supporters of the outlawed Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) on Saturday, one day after regional authorities in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, formally banned the organization over threats to public order and national security.

The ban and subsequent arrests are the culmination of weeks of escalating tensions between the regional government and JAAC, which has organized a series of demonstrations in recent years demanding expanded public services and greater political rights for local residents through a 38-point charter of demands. Last year, negotiations between JAAC representatives, regional government officials, and Pakistan’s federal government resulted in 36 of the group’s 38 demands being formally accepted by authorities. These included key calls for subsidized wheat and lower-cost electricity, two of the group’s top priorities for improving local livelihoods.

Regional Prime Minister Faisal Mumtaz Rathore has repeatedly stated, both before and after the ban was enacted, that his administration remains open to sitting down with JAAC leadership to resolve the two remaining sticking points. One of these unresolved issues centers on a demand for 12 reserved legislative assembly seats specifically for Kashmiri refugees who have settled in the region. Despite the government’s offer of continued dialogue, the regional government confirms JAAC has rejected calls to cancel a mass protest march scheduled for Tuesday, and is insisting all 38 of its original demands be met in full before any de-escalation.

Authorities have deployed additional security personnel across Pakistan-administered Kashmir to prepare for the planned demonstration, amid a history of violent unrest linked to JAAC’s actions. Just last year, clashes between JAAC supporters and security forces left multiple people dead, including several on-duty police officers. Tensions flared again over the weekend: JAAC claimed Saturday that two of its members were wounded when police opened fire during the arrest operations. However, local Kashmir police have refuted this claim, stating that the shooting incident occurred overnight when unidentified armed men opened fire on officers after failing to stop their vehicle when ordered.

Kashmir has remained one of the most volatile flashpoints in South Asia for more than 75 years, with both India and Pakistan claiming the entire region as their sovereign territory. Two of the three full-scale wars the two nations have fought since independence have been waged over control of Kashmir, and cross-border tensions in the region remain a constant source of concern for global security.