Zarah Sultana – End Arms Sales to Israel Today

“Israel’s war on Gaza is not the first time British-made weapons have been used for war crimes, but it must be the last.”

Zarah Sultana MP

Zarah Sultana MP

I beg to move that this House has considered arms export licences for sales to Israel [and]… I am pleased to have secured this timely debate and grateful to the House authorities for granting it. More than 18,000 Palestinians, including more than 7,000 children, have been killed. More than 80% of the population—1.8 million people—has been displaced. Almost 100 journalists have been killed—the highest number in any global conflict in more than 30 years. More than 100 UN aid workers have been killed— more than in any conflict in UN history. This weekend, the UN warned that half the population of Gaza is facing starvation. Behind those horrifying statistics are real people with names, hopes, dreams, families and friendships that are just as real as yours or mine…

I start this debate by talking about Nour, a 17-year-old student from a town just south of Gaza City who wanted to be a doctor when she left school. In a page recovered from her diary, Nour spoke of her hope to make her family proud. Nour was killed when an Israeli airstrike hit her home on 11 October. I will also talk about 26-year-old Safaa and her baby girl Elyana, who were killed in their sleep when an Israeli fighter jet bombed their house in the southern city of Rafah. Then, there is Reem, whose lifeless body was cradled by her grandfather after her family home in al-Nuseirat refugee camp was hit by a strike. Her grandfather Khaled stroked her hair and kissed her goodbye for the last time, pinning her earring to his jacket as a badge to remember her by. He said, “She was the soul of my soul”.

The horror is so extreme that it would be impossible to talk about all the people who have been indiscriminately killed. Just listing the names of all those who have been killed, let alone telling their stories, would take nearly 20 hours. I say that because I want to remind colleagues and the whole House of the shared humanity of those being slaughtered in Gaza today. I say it because, whether we like it or not, this place is deeply complicit in the atrocities we see being inflicted on the Palestinian people. Not only do the British Government provide vital diplomatic support for Israel, most recently joining the US as the lone voices refusing to call for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council—a move the US shamefully vetoed—but we supply the Israeli military with hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of arms.

Actually, the true figure is shrouded in secrecy. Under open export licences, arms companies can export an unlimited quantity of specified equipment with no further monitoring and no tracking of their total value.

This is what the debate is about: getting the Government to commit to ending these arms licences so that we are not complicit in war crimes.

We do track closed export licences, through which we know that the Government have handed arms licences to the Israeli Government worth £474 million since 2015…

We know that we have issued arms licences to the Israeli military worth £474 million since 2015. Included in those licences are parts for F-35 fighter jets—stealth aircraft that are currently unleashing hell on Gaza. According to US arms company Lockheed Martin, which is the lead contractor for these jets, they are “the most lethal…fighter jets in the world.”

Some 15% of the parts for these aircraft are made in British factories, including the Brighton factory that makes the weapon-release system on the jet, allowing it to unleash deadly airstrikes on the people below. We must ask whether it was a British-made release system that sent death screaming on to Safaa and her baby girl in Rafah? Was Nour robbed of her dream of becoming a doctor because a British-made weapon launched an airstrike on her home? And were British-made arms involved in robbing Khaled of his beautiful grand-daughter? The answer is that we do not know, although there is no doubt that British-made arms have been used in the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Despite hollow protestations by Ministers, there is also no doubt that Israel has committed clear violations of international law, as the UN Secretary-General, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others have said…

What makes the Government’s refusal to suspend arms sales even more horrifying is that Israeli officials have been quite open about their intent in Gaza. At the beginning of the assault, an Israeli military spokesperson said that “the emphasis” of bombing was on “damage and not on accuracy”.

Another official promised to turn Gaza into a “city of tents”, while the former head of the Israeli National Security Council said that the aim was to make Gaza “a place where no human being can exist.”

The National Security Minister said that the only thing that should enter Gaza is “not a gram of humanitarian aid” but “hundreds of tons of explosives”.

More recently, an Israeli Minister said that the war would be “Gaza’s Nakba”, which is a reference to the 1948 catastrophe in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and never allowed to return. Given that stated intent, and actions to match it, UN experts have warned of a “genocide in the making”. Let us be clear: if this is a genocide in the making, British-made weapons are almost certainly part of making that genocide happen.

None of that is to deny or downplay Hamas’s appalling attack on 7 October, when 1,200 people—the majority civilians—were killed. I condemn that attack once again, as I have done repeatedly in the Chamber, and call again for the release of all hostages. As I have also said before, echoing the words of the UN Secretary-General, those crimes do not excuse what we have witnessed since.

Unlike those awful crimes, Israel’s assault on Gaza has been carried out with the Government’s unequivocal support and with British-made weapons. Disgracefully, selling arms for war crimes is not new for British Governments. Following Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in 2014, which human rights organisations said violated international law, the Conservative-led coalition Government undertook an investigation into arms sales to Israel, finding that those arms could have been used by the Israeli military in Gaza. That resulted in the Government committing to suspend sales if Israel resumed its military assault…

Following the 2008 to 2009 Gaza war, the Labour Government admitted that British-made arms had been used by Israel, prompting the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, to apologise and to affirm that Israeli misuse of equipment would inform future licence applications.

The truth is that the current criteria for export licences should be enough to stop their sale. Under both UK and international law, the Government are required to prevent the transfer of military equipment to a state if there is a clear or overriding risk that it could be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international law. That is what criteria 1 and 2 of the strategic export licensing criteria say. If those criteria were consistently applied, there would be a de facto arms embargo on Israel, since this military equipment is used to uphold Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories, including the infrastructure of the illegal west bank settlements—illegal, of course, under international law and according to UK policy—and in the transfer of prisoners from occupied territory into Israel, which the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has noted as being a violation of the Geneva convention…

Ending this bloody exchange is one of the steps the Government must take to end their complicity in the massacre in Gaza. Even as countries across the globe, and figures from the Pope to the President of France, call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the Government still refuse to heed that call, ignoring the 76% of the British public who back it. Beyond the immediate need to end the bloodshed, Britain has an historical responsibility to push for a just and lasting peace, having been the mandatory power in Palestine during the 1948 Nakba. As we witness a new and even more terrible Nakba, Britain must honour that duty by demanding an immediate ceasefire and ending arm sales today, and by insisting on ending the illegal occupation and on a free Palestine tomorrow.

Israel’s war on Gaza is not the first time British-made weapons have been used for war crimes, but it must be the last.

• This is an abridged and edited version of Zarah’s intervention into the Westminster Hall debate about arms sales to Israel this week.
• Zarah Sultana is the MP for Coventry South, you can follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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