Originally published at: Britain suspends "some" arms exports to Israel - Boing Boing
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It’s a good start… ban the rest.
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yes, we would like the UK government to move faster and further but it is a step in the right direction. Between this and no longer continuing with the challenge in the courts, it signals to Israel that they no longer have unconditional support.
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That’s us, folks.
You can always trust the UK Gov to go All-In on half-heartedness.
It’s a start, I guess.
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A small move in the right direction is of course welcome, but I fear the undercurrent of that announcement is along the lines of:
“Everyone knows about the existence of the current legal advice because it came up during the election, and we’re annoyingly liable if we ignore legal advice. To make sure we’re not backed into having to act on this sort of advice again, we’ll be very sure not to ask the legal department for any.”
Or in other words, any future inconvenient advice will be dealt with using the Rhodesia Solution:
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It’s a delicate dance that countries do with their allies when they want to apply pressure. They want to keep good relationships with Israel but get the current government to change direction.
Definitely want more pressure applied but this is a start. Hopefully this gives more countries cover to also restrict sales and it starts to snowball.
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This.
Also Israel is perfectly capable of producing enough arms all on their own, they have a capable arms industry and are a net exporter of arms.
So not selling arms to Israel is entirely about sending a message, not about actually making a difference in Israel’s military capabilities.
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“You can’t have any more until you used the old ones up!”
That’ll show 'em.
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And that’s bad because?
The current message is that genocidal wars against civilian populations is okay…
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Hamas is genocidal now? Did they change ends?
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No, that’s not bad at all. And I’m also not saying suspending arms exports is a bad idea.
My point is just this: when we want to figure out what is effective, we can’t just demand reducing arms exports to Israel, because that alone is not sufficient to stop what’s happening.
Israel is #9 on the list that @timd shared, with 2.4% of global arms exports, while UK is #7 with 3.7%.
The real question is how can best send a message that might persuade the Israeli government to act in a different way, the faster the better.
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Any movement towards accountablity here, though is and should be welcome. Anything that saves a life should be welcome.
The only people who are going to be able to stop this genocidal war (without a military invertention from without, which I don’t see helping the situation at all), to REALLY stop it, is the Israeli people. They have to collectively decide that enough is enough and that the occupation and this war is not moving them closer to being able to live safely with their neighbors. This is one of the few ways that the international community has to put pressure on the current government, short of an invasion.
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I was using these numbers, though they are published by the UK.
On a rolling 10 year basis, the UK remains the second largest global defence exporter after the USA.
In 2019, the UK won defence orders worth £11 billion, compared to the previous year (£14 billion) and illustrative of the volatile nature of the global export market for defence.
The UK share of the global defence export market was estimated at 16% in 2019. The UK’s largest defence export markets were the Middle East, Europe and North America.
In 2019, the value of UK Security export sales was £7.2 billion, an increase from 2018 (£5.2 billion), lifting the UK to 3rd place (from 4th in 2018) in the rankings.
The UK’s largest security export markets were Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.
One interesting thing about that is that when those numbers were published 2 or 3 years ago, Israel was posed as a significant customer (“helicopter deals with Egypt and Israel totalling over $1 billion.”)
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Also, unfortunately if the US stops selling arms to Israel, I could see China for example stepping in, to gain influence in Middle East.
There is not shortage of arms dealers (state and non-state, legal and illegal) who are willing to step in and provide arms for whoever or whatever reason.
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