David Cameron’s announcement that the UK will continue arming Israel is “outrageous and illegal” given the mounting and indisputable evidence that Israel is committing war crimes amounting to genocide. That’s the verdict of one campaign group.
David Cameron: yes, let’s keeping fuelling a genocide
On Tuesday 9 April, the UK government concluded it can keep sending weapons to Israel, foreign secretary David Cameron. He rejected pressure to suspend exports over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Cameron said while in the US and during a joint news conference with US secretary of state Antony Blinken:
On Israel and international humanitarian law, and as required by the UK’s robust arms export control regime, I have now reviewed the most recent advice about the situation in Gaza and Israel’s conduct of their military campaign. The latest assessment leaves our position on export licenses unchanged.
Let me be clear, though, we continue to have grave concerns around the humanitarian access issue in Gaza.
The US is by far the largest provider of weapons to Israel. Yet it has also rejected calls to suspend shipments. All this is despite three Britons and one US-Canadian dual citizen being among seven aid workers for World Central Kitchen Israel killed last week.
In a recent letter, more than 600 British lawyers, including former Supreme Court judges, said that Britain risked breaching international law by exporting weapons to Israel.
Germany in the dock
Britain’s strategic licensing criteria states that weapons should not be exported when there is a “clear risk” they could be used in international humanitarian law violations. Yet David Cameron seems to e ignoring this.
The UK government has approved over £487m of weapon sales to Israel since 2015 in so-called single-issue licences, while companies export more under open licences, according to arms control groups.
Another key weapons exporter to Israel, Germany, is facing a case in the International Court of Justice in which Nicaragua says that Berlin is in breach of the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention set up after the Holocaust.
David Cameron will ‘face the consequences’ of his actions
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) said in a statement of David Cameron’s announcement:
Rishi Sunak, David Cameron, and the rest of the government, alongside the UK arms trade, are complicit in these war crimes, and they should face the consequences of this complicity.
The UK government treats Palestinian lives with utter contempt, ignoring this overwhelming evidence in favour of preserving the profits of arms dealers. This government is making a mockery of international law, ignoring over 600 legal professionals, UN experts and its own civil servants in continuing to arm Israel.
This is a decision that parliament urgently needs to scrutinise. The announcement should have been made in parliament, not at a press conference, in another country, lasting just a couple of minutes. This allowed Cameron to claim, unchallenged, that the UK is acting ‘consistently’ with legal advice.
But senior Conservative MP and Foreign Affairs Committee chair, Alicia Kearns, has accused the government of suppressing legal advice stating that Israel is violating international law. It is not good enough for Cameron to simply say the UK is following the law. This legal advice must be published and subjected to parliamentary scrutiny.
Giving Israel impunity for genocide
It continued over David Cameron’s announcement:
International law provides a foundation for global peace. The world is not made safer by the UK arming Israel. It is made safer when states abide by international law, and when there are clear consequences if they fail to do so.
Cameron’s statement gives Israel impunity for the horrific war crimes it has committed over the last six months, and gives Netanyahu the green light to proceed with his planned destruction of Rafah and inflict even more devastating atrocities on the people of Gaza.
Over the last week, the government has faced immense pressure to halt arms sales. It is still resisting. We have to keep up that pressure, not only on this government, but on the Labour Party to finally take a stand and call for a total arms embargo.
But we can’t just wait for the government to take action. It is also down to us. Every day the government allows arms sales to continue is another day arms dealers profit from genocide. Every day people are taking action against these death merchants. This must continue, Every single company that supplies weapons or military equipment must be held to account.
Featured image supplied
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.
