The UK authorities has introduced it’s suspending 30 arms export licences to Israel for navy tools utilized in operations in Gaza.
The rationale for this resolution was “the clear threat that objects exported to Israel below these 30 licences could be utilized in severe violations of IHL [international humanitarian law]”.
Israel’s navy actions in Gaza following the October 7 bloodbath of civilians by Hamas have drawn widespread criticism from human rights teams and the United Nations. The state of affairs in Gaza is at the moment being investigated by the Worldwide Legal Court docket (ICC). Though the exact numbers are disputed, tens of hundreds of civilians have been killed.
When David Lammy got here into workplace as overseas secretary in July 2024, he commissioned a evaluate into Israel’s compliance with worldwide humanitarian legislation. It was the evaluate’s evaluation, in keeping with reviews, that Israel was not in compliance.
In the identical month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson introduced the UK wouldn’t make a submission to the ICC opposing an arrest warrant being issued for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Labour ministers and arms contracts
Dilemmas over arms gross sales and accountability for human rights abuses have been a perennial problem for Labour governments. That is usually because of the ethical language Labour ministers use to explain their overseas coverage.
David Owen, Labour overseas secretary between 1977 and 1979, for instance, promoted human rights as a central plank of his overseas coverage. He argued: “In Britain we’ll take our stand on human rights in each nook of the globe”.
Owen cancelled a contract for navy automobiles destined for El Salvador, resulting in a heated row throughout Whitehall, with the Ministry of Defence arguing this might have severe repercussions for Britain’s arms trade. Within the occasion, the prime minister, James Callaghan, sided with Owen due to the affect of Catholic assist companies.
But Owen continued Britain’s assist for the Pahlavi regime in Iran, which was accused of significant human rights abuses. He defended this on philosophical grounds, asserting the “morality of compromise”, knowledgeable by his Christianity and the worth pluralism of political theorist Isaiah Berlin.
In 1997, Robin Prepare dinner, when newly appointed as overseas secretary, introduced that henceforth “our overseas coverage should have an moral dimension”, and “the Labour authorities will put human rights on the coronary heart of our overseas coverage”.
Quickly afterwards, these goals could be put to the take a look at when Prepare dinner sought to ban arms gross sales to Indonesia resulting from their political repression of the Timorese. Prime Minister Tony Blair was sceptical of the moral rhetoric and cautious of harming exports, solely permitting their suspension after pro-government militias dedicated atrocities following an independence referendum.
The New Labour authorities did introduce better transparency, controls and scrutiny of arms exports. But arms gross sales would once more trigger embarrassment later in Blair’s tenure, when he personally intervened to cease a Critical Fraud Workplace investigation into bribery of Saudi officers – allegedly on the Saudi authorities’s request. This underlined the extent to which worldwide legislation and ethical rhetoric are sometimes overruled on nationwide safety grounds.
Lammy’s intervention is attention-grabbing given his professed want to pursue a “progressive realist” overseas coverage. In an article for Overseas Affairs revealed in Could 2024, Lammy praised Prepare dinner’s dedication to progressive values resembling human rights, but counterbalanced this with one other overseas secretary, Ernest Bevin, and his supposed realism.
This method would appear to be taking part in out in the way in which the licences to Israel had been suspended. Solely round 10% had been stopped, with the opposite 320 persevering with, and people associated to the F35 fighter programme ringfenced from any export restrictions.
Though Lammy doesn’t cite Owen as an affect, there are robust echoes of Owen’s acceptance of compromise as a function of overseas coverage. But, such an method usually attracts better criticism, alienating each those that deny the relevance of morality to overseas coverage, and those that see politics (and worldwide legislation) in morally absolute phrases.
Arms gross sales are political decisions
The way in which Lammy has utilized these restrictions underscores the extent to which such choices are political. Though the suspensions had been couched in authorized language and justified on worldwide humanitarian legislation grounds, they’re in the end a political assertion.
The UK authorities is expressing its disapproval of Israel’s conduct in Gaza in a approach that displays the political context inside which they’re working. It has despatched a message to the Israeli authorities with out making any actual distinction to Israel’s capability to defend itself. And it has couched that call in authorized phrases to keep away from clashing with the US authorities on the matter.
The earlier authorities obtained related authorized recommendation however selected to not act. This was an equally political selection.
Making this resolution shores up the UK’s credibility as a supporter of worldwide humanitarian legislation at dwelling and overseas. If it encourages compromise and a hostage deal, the hope is that the hostages, together with 14 British residents, would possibly return dwelling and the folks of Gaza would possibly be capable to rebuild their lives.