By IRNA,
London : Britain is continuing to sell a wide range of military equipment to the Israel, despite last year’s massacre of more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza.
After the attack on Gaza, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told parliament that all future applications for arms-related exports to Israel “will be assessed taking into account the recent conflict”.
But the latest official figures show that UK government approved almost £4m worth of export licences for weapons and equipment, including small arms ammunition and parts for sniper rifles in first nine months of 2009.
Most of the equipment approved for sale to the Zionst regime were components for large military items, such as parts for ground-based radars, military aircraft engines, military aircraft navigation equipment, military communications and unmanned drones.
The continuing exports have been condemned by the anti-poverty campaigning organisation, War on Want, which has called for a two-way arms embargo between Britain and Israel since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon.
“The licensing of arms sales to Israel flies in the face of the UK’s arms export guidelines, which prohibit the sale of military equipment that could be used for internal repression,” said Yasmin Khan of War on Want. “The UK government remains complicit in Israel’s human rights violations unless it prohibits the sale of all arms to Israel,” Khan told IRNA.
Approved exports sales also include electronic warfare equipment, ground vehicle military communications equipment and remote ground-sensor systems.
Last year, Miliband admitted that Israeli equipment used in the attack on Gaza “almost certainly” contained British-supplied components included components for US F16 combat aircraft, and Apache helicopters. They also included equipment for radar on Israeli ships that could be used for fire-control against surface targets, and armoured personnel carriers adapted from Centurion tanks sold to Israel in the late 1950s.
When questioned by parliament’s strategic export controls committee last month, Foreign Office minister for the Middle East Ivan Lewis insisted that the government considered arms exports to Israel on a “case-by-case basis”.
Britain’s official guidelines for arms exports stipulate that arms sales should not be approved “where there is a clear risk that the export might be used for internal repression” or where they would “provoke or prolong armed conflicts”.