Understandably, I’ve received a large number of emails regarding arms exports to Israel following the fatal attack on the World Central Kitchen relief workers.
Since 2015, the UK has licensed at some £500 million of military exports to Israel. These have included components for F-35 stealth bomber aircraft, components for Israeli armed and surveillance drones, and military intelligence and technology.
The case for these arms sales is twofold. First, Israel is a strategic ally in an unstable region where UK vital interests are at risk. This is particularly so, with respect to Iran, the region’s principal troublemaker, and exporter of terror (as we’ve seen again just last week in London with an attempted assassination on an Iranian Journalist).
Second, modern Israel has, since its creation in 1948, had to fight wars launched by hostile surrounding states determined to end its very existence. It has also been subject to continuous terrorist attacks and hostage taking, of which the 7th October last year was the most brutal. We would have failed in our obligation to our friend and ally had we withheld armaments with which to defend themselves.
Hamas is a terrorist organisation dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Islamic State of a particularly unpleasant kind. Hamas is also the Government of Gaza. Therefore, a proper and lawful retaliation by Israel in response to the 7th October attack by Hamas, inevitably involved a military assault on Gaza with brutal consequences for non-combatants. Hamas will have been well aware of these consequences when it planned its attack on Israel. Furthermore, Hamas’s military doctrine has always involved using its civilian population as a human shield. That is why it operates from schools and hospitals. And that is why it ordered the population not to comply with Israel’s warning to evacuate south of Wadi Gaza before the first Israeli Defence Force incursion into Gaza City. The ghastly misery of Gaza is first and foremost a calculated result of the actions by Hamas, with the intention to radicalise and recharge fighters for another generation.
In my estimate Israel has fallen for Hama’s strategy of radicalisation by its wholly disproportionate response and apparent disregard for non-combatants, with all the possibilities now arising from a new generation full of hatred.
Notwithstanding some pretty suspect casualty statistics from Hamas-controlled sources, and some frightfully shoddy reporting by the BBC and others, nevertheless we can see from our own TV screens, from independent reporting, from the experience of aid workers, and from the dire reports by the United Nations, that the suffering of the civilian population is intolerable.
For months UK diplomacy, together with the USA, has sought to restrain Israel. We have demanded more access for humanitarian aid; we have demanded military operations which take much greater care to protect civilians and reduce collateral damage. We have deployed all the influence that we have as friendly powers. There comes a time however, when we have to do more than say that we are very concerned, or even very cross. At some stage we have to hold Israel to account for its misjudgements and the way that it is operating.
I think that a temporary suspension of our arms sales would now be a salutary, if not overdue, way of indicating to Israel the measure of our dismay.