Europe
UK defends decision to restrict arms to Israel; Netanyahu calls it shameful
By
The Washington Post September 3, 2024
Victoria Bisset and Loveday Morris
The Washington Post September 3, 2024
Two Israeli F-35 “Adirs” fly in formation in December 2016. (Erik D. Anthony/U.S. Air Force)
LONDON — The British government on Tuesday defended its decision to restrict some arm sales to Israel, amid growing domestic and international criticism.
“We’ve made this legal judgment as a result of the process we’re required to follow,” British Defense Secretary John Healey said of the move to suspend 30 of 350 arms export licenses where the government says there is “a clear risk” that the arms may be used in “serious violation of international humanitarian law” in Gaza.
Healey stressed Tuesday that the country remains “a staunch ally” of Israel, adding that “our determination to stand with Israel, to be part of the collective defense if they come under direct attack again, as they have done before, remains resolute and absolute.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the announcement “shameful.”
“Days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, the UK government suspended thirty arms licenses to Israel,” he wrote in a thread on X, adding that five British citizens are still being held hostage in Gaza. “With or without British arms, Israel will win this war and secure our common future.”
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused the current leader, Keir Starmer, and Foreign Secretary David Lammy of “abandoning Israel,” while Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said on X: “It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel, has announced a partial suspension of arms licences.”
But both Oxfam and Amnesty International said the British government’s actions were insufficient.
Oxfam’s chief executive, Halima Begum, welcomed Britain’s recognition “of the clear risk” that its arms were being used “in serious breaches” of international humanitarian law. But, she said in a statement Monday, “suspending just 30 licences out of 350, and crucially leaving loopholes for components in F-35 fighter jets that have been dropping 2,000-pound bombs on Palestinians for months now, is nowhere near adequate.”
Amnesty International said the decision was “too limited,” with its U.K. chief executive Sacha Deshmukh arguing in a statement that the exemption of the F-35 program “is a catastrophically bad decision for the future of arms control and misses a clear obligation to hold Israel accountable for its extensive war crimes and other violations.”
Healey said Tuesday that his government did not introduce a suspension for F-35 components, as it is “hard to distinguish” which are used for Israeli jets. “This is a global supply chain, with the U.K. a vital part of that supply chain,” he told the BBC. “We are not prepared to put at risk the operation of fighter jets that are central to our own U.K. security, that of our allies and of NATO.”
Here’s what else to know:
• Health-care workers in Gaza have already inoculated about a quarter of the children eligible for a polio vaccine, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, surpassing an early target in the mass campaign to prevent a wider outbreak of the disease. Since Sunday, when the campaign started, more than 160,000 children under age 10 have been vaccinated in central Gaza, according to Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Palestinian territories. The goal is to immunize more than 600,000 kids across the enclave after the virus reemerged for the first time in 25 years.
• Four Palestinian journalists were injured as they covered the ongoing Israeli operations in the West Bank city of Jenin, according to the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate. Mohammed Mansour, a photojournalist with the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, was shot by live ammunition in the hand, and another of its journalists was hit by shrapnel, the news outlet said. “The car was marked Press, it has a sticker, they all had vests on. It was clear,” said syndicate spokeswoman Shuruq As’ad, adding that two other journalists were injured in the same incident. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.
• A 17-year-old Palestinian was killed and his father injured in an Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Tulkarm, a spokeswoman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society said Tuesday. A total of six people have been injured since a new operation in Tulkarm began Monday, she said. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 30 Palestinians have been killed and about 130 wounded in the West Bank since last Wednesday.
• At least 40,819 people have been killed and 94,291 injured in Gaza since the war started, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 340 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza.