UK approved £4-million arms sales to Israel after Gaza war

The British government approved £4 million in weapons sales to the Israeli regime in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s massive military offensive against the Gaza Strip last summer, a new study has found.

The research study, titled “Arming Apartheid: UK Complicity in Israel’s Crimes Against the Palestinian People,” was released Thursday offering a detailed analysis of how the British supply of weaponry to Israel renders it complicit in the regime’s severe human rights abuses.

The research shows that the licenses of weapons sales cover the kind of military hardware likely to be used by the Israeli military in another act of aggression against the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The controversial revelations were part of the study authored by David Wearing, a researcher at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) and a member of Campaign Against the Arms Trade’s (CAAT) Steering Committee.

“More than 2,000 people died in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, and yet in the months immediately following the conflict it was business as usual for the UK government and the arms companies they support,” said CAAT’s Media Coordinator Andrew Smith.

Smith further underlined that Britain continues to sell lethal weapons to the Israeli regime, despite its persistent violations of international law.

“The continuation of arms sales represents a form of political as well as material support from the UK to Israel despite the construction of the ‘apartheid wall’ in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements there and the ongoing blockade of Gaza,” Smith added.

According to the report, among the arms sales the UK arranged for Tel Aviv were special components for military helicopters and a range of hi-tech parts for guidance and navigation systems used by the Israeli military forces.

Britain’s former Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government also approved weapons licenses for a number of third-party countries that sell arms to the Israeli regime, the report states.

Such licenses, according to the study, covered the sale of components for military communications equipment, helicopters used in combat and ground-to-ground missiles.

Britain, the report notes, has a history of unethical weapon sales to the Tel Aviv regime.

It cited a ministerial statement issued in April 2009 by the then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband confirming that Israeli weapons used in its 2008-9 war on the Gaza Strip “almost certainly” included UK-supplied components.

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