UK suspends 30 arms export contracts to Israel ‘with regret’

Muhammad Amin

Palestinian activists have welcomed the UK’s long overdue decision to suspend 30 arms export licences to Israel because it’s “likely” violating humanitarian law, but they’re outraged vital F35 fighter jet parts are not on the list.

The high-profile role America’s premier weapon has played in the ongoing Gaza genocide had made it the Number One target for activists’ demands to stop the death-enabling flow of UK-made weapons to Tel Aviv.

Another 320-odd licences remain active, however, and activists are now turning their attentions to these, with the F35 top of their list.

‘Workhorse of the genocide’

The F35 was described as the “workhorse of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign” and activists said refusing to put it out to pasture was both hypocritical and probably legally incorrect.

By suspending some licences “with regret”, the government had finally acknowledged what has been clear to the global majority for nearly 10 months – Israeli is an open human rights violator of the most egregious kind. Once that acknowledgement is made, there can be no backing away from its implication that it must apply to all lethal weapons.

Given that the F35 was the most lethal of the lot, that meant it was crying out for inclusion on the banning list, activists argued.

The suspension, announced reluctantly by Foreign Secretary David Lammy in parliament Monday, covers components for other aircraft, including drones, fighter planes and helicopters.

Britain’s arms-exporting criteria oblige it to suspend arms export licences if there’s a clear risk its weapons might be used in serious violation of humanitarian law.

‘Regrets decision’

“Facing a conflict such as this, it is this government’s legal duty to review export licences,” Lammy said.

“It is with regret that I inform the House today the assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that, for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk.”

Lammy said the reluctant acknowledgement did not necessarily mean that Israel had broken humanitarian law and that it was impossible verify all claims.

Instead, the assessment found “that Israel could reasonably do more to ensure life saving food and medical supplies reach people in Gaza”, Lammy said

He added the government was “deeply concerned” about reports of mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, which inspectors had not been able to investigate after being denied access.

He hastened to add that Britain would stand by Israel if it was attacked, particularly from Iran. In the same breath, he unveiled fresh sanctions against three members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Emergency order

“This government will continue to stand for Israel’s security and we will always do so in a manner consistent with our obligations to domestic and international law,” he said.

The announcement came hours before two organisations were set to pursue fresh legal action to force the exports to stop immediately.

Lawyers with the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (Glan) and the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq said had planned to request and emergency order at a Tuesday morning hearing.

They said late Monday they would now consider whether the Monday ban was “extensive enough to meet the gravity of the situation and assess whether further litigation remains necessary”.

‘Backed into corner’

Glan’s legal representative Dearblha Minogue, said the government’s “momentous decision vindicates everything Palestinians have been saying for months”.

“The UK government was backed into a corner,” she said.

Yasmine Ahmed, UK Director of Human Rights Watch, said the ban did not go far enough.

“That the UK government chose to exempt components for the F-35, a workhorse of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign, shows either a miscomprehension of the law or a wilful disregard.”

Danish news outlet Information revealed Monday Israel used an F-35 in a 13 July attack on a designated safe zone in Gaza which killed at least 90 people.

‘Unforgivable delay’

But Lammy said that parts for F-35s were excluded from the ban because stopping their export would “undermine the global F-35 supply chain that is vital for the security of the UK, our allies and Nato”.

Sam Perlo-Freeman, researcher for Campaign Against Arms Trade, said the F-35 exclusion “utterly outrageous and unjustifiable”.

“These are by far the UK’s most significant arms supplies to the Israeli military, and just today we have confirmation that they have been used in one of the most egregious attacks in recent months,” he said.

Anna Stavrianakis, director at UK-based Shadow World Investigations and professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, told Middle East Eye that the F-35 exclusion means Monday’s decision “seems more like an attempt to mollify critics than a meaningful restriction on Israel’s ability to commit genocide”.

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said it was “unforgivable” that it had taken “11 months of carnage and atrocities” for the government to fulfil its obligations.

But he also said the move was a welcome start: “The most crucial element is that for the first time a British government has accepted that Israel was likely to have violated international law in Gaza,” he said.

“Which bits of international law? It opens up a conversation.”