The UK government has suspended certain arms export licences to Israel due to concerns they could be used in violations of international humanitarian law.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced the decision in the House of Commons today.
Lammy stated that the government’s legal duty is to review export licences when there is a clear risk they might be used to facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law. He cited Criterion 2C of the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, which states the government will “not issue export licences if there is a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law.”
“The assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel there exists a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law,” Lammy said. As a result, around 30 of 90 export licences to the Israel Defence Forces have been suspended. These licences include equipment for military aircraft, helicopters, drones, and ground targeting.
The government will publish a summary of the assessment for transparency.
Lammy expressed concerns over the ongoing conflict in Gaza, noting that Israel’s actions have led to “immense loss of civilian life, widespread destruction to civilian infrastructure, and immense suffering.” He acknowledged the difficulty in reaching definitive conclusions on allegations regarding Israel’s conduct due to “insufficient information either from Israel, or other reliable sources.”
Nevertheless, he stated that “it is the assessment of His Majesty’s Government, that Israel could reasonably do much more to ensure lifesaving food and medical supplies reach civilians in Gaza.”
Lammy also raised concerns about the treatment of detainees, citing “credible claims of mistreatment” that the International Committee of the Red Cross has been unable to investigate due to being denied access to places of detention. He noted that both his predecessor and major UK allies have “repeatedly and forcefully raised these concerns with the Israeli government,” but that “regrettably, they have not been addressed satisfactorily.”
The UK provides 15% of the parts for each F-35. Does this suspension affect those parts? If so, there’s turbulence ahead.
Apparently not. Labour know that would be far more damaging to the UK.
Exactly and the idiots demanding we do when we have a far worse dictator threatening our freedoms really should get real and understand the true consequences of such an action. Would be a prospective death sentence for every person in our Country and well beyond. Whatever the situation in Palatine our defence comes first, however unpalatable that is.
The F35 is a different matter. That’s not our place.
If we want to ban F35 exports then we develop our own aircraft.
That’s one of the best arguments for sovereign defence capability.
The same people who want us to stop us from following American policy want us to be dependent on them for defence.
Um nope. Germany banned Eurofighter parts sales to Saudi. We can absolutely stop selling parts, it would completely damage us as a reliable ally in the F35 program, but on the other side UK could ‘claim’ moral high ground. Tempest is not sovereign either we will rely on Japan and Italy for export support. Japan is currently having reservations against KSA joining the program.
You misunderstand what I’m saying.
It’s not our place to stop F-35 exports is my point. It’s not a sovereign aircraft.
My entire point is that if you want the UK to completely control who it exports arms to, then we should be developing these systems ourselves.
Ironically, the people who complain about us following American policy are making a cade for us to spend MORE on defence, for sovereign capability.
Sorry I think we need to agree to disagree if the government thought loss of life in Gaza was a morally worthy cause they could put those life’s above the F35 program. US and others would eject us from the program, which would take years or counter sanction us. Of course, some Unions in the UK would also be critical of the decision due to job losses. Its would be a political decision with consequences. However even this decision the government has made for a limited embargo could be looked on by other allies as making the UK an unreliable… Read more »
The government has suspended 30 out of 350 export licenses for equipment they have seen the IDF using against civilian rather than military targets, the suspended licenses include military helicopters, drones and targeting systems.
Thanks for the information.
No this is a very small statement, showing that they think the Israeli government is going to far..in the same way the US has done.
Of course Tehran will be winding back it’s arms exports to Syria, Hezbollah Hamas, etc. Look two wrongs don’t make it right. But this looks at like voter segment appeasement tbh otherwise there should be a blanket ban including F35 parts if it’s genuine attempt to ake the moral high ground.
not saying it’s the right thing to do, just the motivation, I think there is an element of voter segment appeasement, but I also think it’s a genuine expression of “not happy” with the way Isreal is conducting its campaign, the U.S. has done the same, with holding back certain munitions. There is a separate question around should the west even be considering the moral element when it comes to geopolitics and its own geostrategic position. As you point out our enemies do not consider the moral position, just the advantage of their position.After all the west merrily killed many… Read more »
Given the bits of important kit we buy off Israel, let’s hope they don’t retaliate.
Iran and the Houthis are using our Israel support as a proxy to disrupt civilian shipping. Supporting them is not in our interest.
The systems they provide us are low complexity in comparison to what we can develop (not that it wouldn’t cost more).
I read a list once, I forget what was on it but it seemed quite extensive.
We spend over £50 Billion on defence.
These systems are of low enough complexity, that we don’t care enough to spend on R&D to develop ourselves.
In general, anything we import isn’t anything that we couldn’t develop ourselves.
So we should should halt our Challenger 3 programme and our only air defence programme whilst we fund and develop our own solutions to replace Israeli Tech? You obviously don’t understand the consequences of what your advocating.
“These systems are of low enough complexity…” The acrobats (and ADA…) performed a magnificent routine. 😂
Politics aside , Isreal is several years a head with some systems it would take us a long time to catchup and a big investment. Also Isreali kit is battle tested, living in a war zone ensures you make sure what you buy will work.
I don’t disagree.
My point is that if we are serious about halting arms sales, then we will find a solution.
A civilian mentality suggests that if we sell very little to Israel and they sell a lot to us, a trade war is in our favor. The Treasury doesn’t care about military capability, and they won’t understand why it’s a problem that needs a solution. They may not have a ten-year rule any more, but they still have a ten-year mentality.
Whatever solution you have in mind wouldn’t be funded. Changing any funded plan right now will lead to postponements, cancellations and cost savings.
Don’t worry we can toss any bit of kit to the Saudis and they’ll test it out against the Yemenis as they have been doing already, and as a plus we would recover some capabilities lost from outsourcing. What we shouldn’t fall for is for a country that wouldn’t even exist without our part to counter threaten us for more than reasonable suspensions.
I agree it would be far better for Iran to take over the Yemen and Isreal via their proxies.
I saw the same list on the hellsite…as you say it was extensive.
Some is provided by UK based Elbit so not direct supplied …
Here is some of it…
Sky Sabre AD control system
SMASH smart shooter anti drone sights for SA
Parts for Hermes and watchkeeper
Spike
UK Pilot training
Trophy active defence system for CH3
Fwd Air Controller sighting and control Systems
Kevlar for T26 protection
XACT NVGs
RN EW systems
Ground Based radar
Parts of Morpheus
81mm Mortar and 105 gun simulators
Micro drones.
If the Israel Govt retaliates…?
Exactly.
I have no doubt ministers would then be left scratching heads.
There is no easy answer here, as is anyone indicating we should keep arming isreal when they are mass killing civilians like no other regime has outside maybe Russia in many decades. We have a morale duty to not be supporting such acts.
I however suspect these contracts have been selected carefully, to be seen to be doing something without actually doing anything. They were probably contracts coming to an end or of limited value to isreal such as long term deliveries that can be switched on again before delivery dates.
So in reality it’s pointless and just to appease part of Labour’s voter base rather than a tangible action to punish Isreal. Which would suggest the morality if is also questionable, give as you suspect it will have no impact.
Its politics, every thing that is done is to appease either the voters or donors. That’s just democracy for you.
For sure it’s morally questionable approach, but at least something is atleast better than nothing which was the previous approach.
Personally, I don’t think the Conservatives were any different it wasn’t they did nothing. They made the decision to maintain exports based on their voting base also. Ultimately the results are the same, people will continue to die, but a section of the UK public and political class will have slightly warm a fuzzy feeling they are sticking it to Isreal (possibly the jews in general)and what little political influence we have over Isreal has just dropped a few % points.
Yeah I don’t think labour is any better or worse than then the conservates on this point. Wasn’t comparing to previous goverment more previous stance.
Lammy is playing to the crowd here he probably (almost certainly) has no idea what we get from Isreal! This next 5 yrs is going to be a disaster for defence and foreign policy.
I certainly hope they’d try, though I reckon they won’t dare try and make such an important ‘ally’ break off from supporting them. This response is the bare minimum we could’ve done.
What’s the list of those things now restricted, I find it tough to find any details when doing a search. All one gets is that nearly all of it is tied into the F-35 production which is as good as impossible to restrict for obvious reasons. Anyone have a decent list? Personally I don’t consider LandRovers and the like as weapons some activists clearly do.
Politics. So if the Israeli government responds in kind, can we look forward to restrictions on Israeli technologies being used by the UK government? Ajax? Challenger?
Hm… EW for RN, composite armor for type 26, Trophy and Iron fist, SMASH X4, air defense system, helmet gen. 4-5, new display for F-35 (Elbit!) etc. etc…
Well this thread has certainly opened the box and shown where certain people’s loyalties lie!
Yes.
Did we place armed sanctions on Jordan in 1948 when they invaded the West Bank and evicted Jews from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City where they had lived for hundreds of years? Then they bombarded the Jews trapped in West Jerusalem and along with the local Arabs cut off supplies to starve the remaining Jews. Drive up the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and you will see the wrecks of supply column trucks ambushed and drivers slaughtered by local Arab villagers.
It is my understanding that we send a very small amount of kit to Israel, and this would seem to me more about two tier Kier making an effort at pacifying his own “Pro-Palestinian” supporters, Labour members and a number of Labour MPS from certain ethnic and religious backgrounds and ideology. Lets hope Israel see this for what it is, sad party politics, and not respond in kind, as we import way more tech and kit from them as we export.
Boom.
Israel is used to what politicians have to do to placate the masses. During the Yom Kippur War (1973) Jordan declared war on Israel. It sent troops to the Syrian front. However if you look more closely, you won’t find accounts of pitched battles between Israelis and Jordanians. That’s because King Hussein had to declare war and send troops to appease the masses, and Israel understood. Hussein had the Jordanian’s troop movements back-channelled to Israel so that the two groups of soldiers wouldn’t accidentally bump into each other.
Export licences are pretty small beer in comparison.
I would logically say if they were genuinely concerned beyond a section of their vote base they would blanket ban to have a bigger impact. If Isreal had ground aircraft like F35 due to arms embargo then it would force them to negotiate as this would massively impact their ability to go on the front foot and actively disrupt proxies like Hezbollah. I post this from a logical.perspective not a political view.
It’s time we got a grip. The grey-zone war is turning kinetic. The Western Alliance is up against China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and proxies. Israel is on our side. Hamas, Houthis, Hizbollah, etc, are on the other side. Propaganda is pumped into our media all the time to distract from that one truth. 300,000 dead in Yemen. 900,000 dead in Syria. The Economist is projecting up to eight million deaths in the Sudan over the next three years. Yet the propaganda keep our eyes firmly on Israel and the Labour government has fallen for it. While they get all… Read more »
Well said. This is just the latest example of other people blaming the west for there problems. A few years ago it was slavery, despite there being far more slaves today in various forms than in human existence. Today it’s blame the west for a war the west never instigated whilst forgetting the slaughter of millions by there own people and the continued slaughter in various regions. The ironic thing is most of the people jumping on the bandwagon and blaming the west for everything would probably be stoned to death or banged up to rot in some shitpit if… Read more »
Absolutely! Bravo!
It’s called antisemitism. Another name is institutional racism. Your Labour government is famous for it.
Signs of a “government” clearly out of its depth when it comes to terrorism. This is just a sop to the far left.
remind me how many civilians killed in Gaza? more than the London Blitz if that helps you put things in perspective
Leftist troll
ok John lol
Yes, I absolutely agree the numbers are ridiculously high and quite how Hamas alliwed this to happen is beyond comprehension. Hamas took action on Isreal without appropriately preparing the civilian population for the inevitable war whilst building tunnels and stock poling for its own forces did nothing to try to protect the population that put it in power. A government’s first priority is to.protect it’s people Hamas has failed on spectacular scale. Imagine if we attacked a country without our own air defences to repell the retaliation or the ability to prevent a ground offensive, the UK.public would be holding… Read more »
Too busy being terrorists to be a governing body.
Hamas are a terrorist organization, no one has ever disputed that. but Israel, being the supposed “only democracy” in the Middle East went on a blind vendetta against Hamas killing everyone in its wake…hostages included as Netanyahu’s perpetual state of conflict guarantees that he won’t go to trial in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile 40 000 + civilians are dead most of them women and children
Did you, the British, not do the same against Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, etc. Did you not partake in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Were they war crimes? We’re they acts of Genocide, a term one im.beci1e on here loosely throws around? Of course not. They were acts of war, not Genocide. To quote your great Air Marshall Arthur Harris: “The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.” “They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the… Read more »
I’m not British
second, world war 2 pitted nations of equal technologies on a vast territory, not one extremely powerful country vs. an enclave of 10 sq KM that is 99.9% civilians and 0.1% terrorists..you can’t compare both, you simply can’t..
You simply can. You absolutely can. Hamas has overwhelming support amongst the Gazans who largely and enthusiastically celebrated the brutal, barbaric, animalistic acts of October 7th. Just because the Gazans are blinded by hate and a collective stupidity does not excuse them from the consequences of their savage and bestial actions. It certainly does not negate Isreal’s right to self defence. If you believe it does, the only country in the world that is expected to, then I really have to believe your motives for doing so are suspect. BTW Your 0.1% terrorist statement is absolute nonsense. A poll taken… Read more »
Yes i’m sure the 12 000 + children are blinded by hate..please, this is a people that has been oppressed for the last century because France and the UK decided to carve up the region as they see fit… again i’m not British, so it’s not my government but you are definitely on the wrong side of history as it is being proven day after day. Israel is committing genocide on innocent people trying to kill the few bad apples. Israel can defend itself, but being the “superpower” it claims to be, it can defend itself following the international human… Read more »
Again you are factually incorrect on all points. 1. Isreal is not a so called democracy. It is an actual democracy and a non homophobic and non misogynistic society, The opposite of Gaza. 2. Britain and France did not carve up the region. It was The League of Nations, the predecessor of The United Nations, after WW1 and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In 1947 the UN divided the old British Mandate of Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs. Following this the Palestinian Arabs and surrounding Arab states invaded Jewish land with the object of complete eradication of… Read more »
Nope Israel isn’t committing genocide.
The definition of genocide isn’t being met and the actions taken are not genocidal in their outcome.
You did quite well on the Hamas shrill bingo card .
I got 5 crossed out.
As for your Labour government, they all wholeheartedly supported making the openly antisemitic racist Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister of your country. In May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) launched an inquiry into whether Labour had “unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish”. In October 2020, the EHRC published its report, determining that the party was “responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination”. The EHRC found 23 instances of political interference and concluded that Labour breached the Equality Act. Effectively, the Labour Party was declared by the EHRC to be a racist antisemitic… Read more »
Hamas runs Gaza and is therefore accountable for what goes on in Gaza. Irrespective of any designation we give them. There seems to be an insatiable appetite to let them off the hook for anything that has happened, what because we labelled them as terrorists, shouldn’t it be the opposite. Ultimately they didn’t need to attack Isreal and take hostages and had they not there would not be 40000 casualties. Which incidentally is a Hamas numbers which we are saying are credible, so can we allow them to be credible in some aspects but let them off when it comes… Read more »
Nobody knows. Hamas don’t distinguish fighters from civilians in death any more than they do in life.
err…no.
Best estimates from reliable and independent sources put civilian deaths in Gaza at 10-15k.
Thats about 10k less than the Blitz.
The Figures bandied about by Hamas of 40K+ are pure fantasy.
That figure includes around 15-20K Hamas fighters that, are called civilians.
24 686 deaths as per the UN, 52% women and children… such a moral army!
That would be the UN who use…
Wait for it….
Wait for it…
It will be worth it….
HAMAS Controlled Gaza Authority figures.
The figures that have been widely ridiculed for
i see you’re coping with official figures recognized by your own government…but then again i’m guessing you are in Gaza so you probably know best lool
He’s just full of misinformation and propaganda.
I think we’re going to have trouble with this new government. The last lot were incompetent low energy, lazy clowns. This new lot seem to be reality-denying cultists. They will drive the car off the cliff and be glad to do so if their utopianism instructs them to ignore reality and do so.
Nail head hit.
🙄
Apart from the fact that my wife is Jewish, I have from a very early age and will always be, on the side of Israel. The Holocaust was for me the worst crime committed against one group, the Jewish people, in known history, not just because of the numbers of men, women and children that were tortured and killed by the Nazis, but because of the clinical, industrial scale by which it was perpetrated by a so called civilised culture. So, after the barbaric attack by Hamas, huge numbers, including many Muslims were horrified and sympathised with Israel and the… Read more »
We make F35 fuselage parts that are shipped to Lockheed for their production line. The other aircraft spares go into a pool. We do not supply fuselages to Israel whose plane were built several years ago.