Cameron: Halting arms to Israel harms hostage deal
Stopping arms shipments to Israel strengthens Hamas and complicates efforts to reach a deal to release the remaining 132 hostages, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron told Sky News on Sunday.
“I don’t think it would have been a wise path” to halt arms sales to Israel, Cameron said.
In a nod to public and media pressure on the British government to ban arms to Israel he said, “If I announced that today, it might help me get through this television interview.
“But actually, it would strengthen Hamas, it would weaken Israel. I think it probably makes a hostage deal less likely,” he said.
Cameron recalled how he was pressed to make a political declaration on the issue a few months ago, but he abandoned the idea because the next thing that happened was a massive Iranian drone and missile attack against Israel.
The Foreign Secretary spoke in the aftermath of US President Joe Biden’s comments to CNN that he would halt arms sales to Israel if it embarked on a major military operation in Gaza.
Biden was harshly criticized by right-wing Israelis, Republicans, and many American Jewish groups for his comment.
In practice, however, save for one suspended shipment of arms, all other weapons sales have appeared to move forward and no formal steps have been taken to stop them.
Cameron noted that there was no comparison between British and American arms sales to Israel.
“The United States is a massive bulk state supplier of weapons to Israel, including, you know, 1000-pound bombs and all the rest of it. The UK provides less than 1% of Israel’s weapons and it’s not a state supplier,” Cameron stated.
He noted that the arms exports that exist are carefully scrutinized.
“I think we should stick with our rigorous process of margin sure we act within the law” that already exists on these issues, he stated.
Cameron stressed, however, that Great Britain, much like the United States, opposed a major IDF operation in Rafah, explaining that he had expressed this position to Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer last week.
The British government has been clear that “for there to be a major offensive in Rafa, there would have to be an absolutely clear plan about how you save lives, how you move people out of the way how you make sure they’re fed.,” Cameron stated.
“We have seen no such plan, so we don’t support a major offensive [in Rafah] right now,” Cameron stated.
Great Britain and the international community have been concerned about the fate of over 1.3 million Palestinian civilians in that area, many of whom fled there to escape bombing in the north of the Gaza Strip early in the war.
Cameron explained that what needs to happen next is to “stop the fighting by having a hostage deal, achieving a pause in the fighting, and then using that to build a sustainable ceasefire without going back to further conflict,” Cameron stated.
The problem is that “Hamas had been offered a deal which would release hundreds of [Palestinian security and terrorist] prisoners from Israeli jails, that would provide a pause in the fighting to get desperately needed aid into Gaza,” Cameron said.
Hamas, however, is “not taking that deal. So the question really, I think is for Hamas, why are you allowing the suffering to go on when you could stop it now?” he said.
Cameron stressed that irrespective, more humanitarian aid needs to enter Gaza, noting that Israel has taken some steps to improve the situation but still has not done enough.