Arms suppliers to Israel put on the defensive
Concerns about possibly funding war crimes
For months, Western governments have provided military support for Israel while fending off accusations that their weapons were being used to commit war crimes in the Gaza Strip. But as a global outcry over the growing death toll in Gaza mounts, maintaining that balance is becoming increasingly difficult, as was clear on a single day this past week.
On Tuesday, in a United Nations court, Germany found itself having to defend against accusations that it was complicit in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by exporting weapons to Israel.
A few hours later, in Washington, a top Democrat and Biden administration ally, Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, said he might block an $18 billion deal to sell F-15 fighter jets to Israel unless he was assured that Palestinian civilians would not be indiscriminately bombed.
And 2 miles away, at a media briefing at the State Department, Britain’s foreign minister, David Cameron, was pressed on what his government had concluded after weeks of internal review about whether Israel has breached international humanitarian law during its offensive in Gaza.
The governments of Germany and the United States remain the backbone of international military support for Israel, accounting for 95 percent of major weapons systems sent to Israel, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks the global weapons trade. So far, the pressure has not swayed them or Britain, although President Biden this month went further than he ever had, threatening to condition future support for Israel on how it addresses his concerns about civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Cameron also equivocated, if only a bit. After defending Israel at the briefing and suggesting that the recent advice he had received did not conclude that arms exports should be halted, he said that the British government’s position reflected only “the latest assessment” of the issue, implying some flexibility.
Global outrage over a war that Gaza health authorities say has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, including 13,000 children, has upended geopolitics and could help determine the outcome of the US presidential election in November. Increasingly, it also raises the threat of war crimes charges
against governments that export weapons in conflicts where opponents argue international humanitarian law has been violated.
Such concerns were raised recently by more than 600 lawyers and retired judges who urged the British government to freeze weapons shipments to Israel, citing a “plausible risk” of genocide in Gaza.
Israel vigorously denies accusations of genocide, arguing that it needs to defend itself against Hamas, which led the Oct. 7 attack that Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people.
The reported Iranian drone strike on Israel in retaliation for a bombing in Damascus that killed a number of high-ranking
Iranian officers seems certain to shake up a volatile situation.
Nevertheless, as the death toll has risen in Gaza, Belgium, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain have all halted arms deals with Israel. The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has appeared to discourage sending more weapons, wryly noting in February that “if the international community believes that this is a slaughter, that too many people are being killed, maybe they have to think about the provision of arms.”
The hearings this past week against Germany, at the UN’s International Court of Justice, was the most recent chilling factor for Israel’s arms suppliers. And matters could grow worse if Israel follows through on its
plans to invade Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering.
The case, brought by Nicaragua, highlighted concerns that foreign weapons sales to Israel have done as much to kill Palestinians as they have to help protect the Jewish state. Israel has strongly denied that it is committing genocide, but it was ordered by the court in February, in a separate case brought by South Africa, to take steps to prevent atrocities.
Germany is estimated to have approved about $353 million in arms exports to Israel last year, although officials have said most military aid provided since the war began was nonlethal. Accusations that its weapons
might have contributed to genocide have stung Germany, given its World War II-era crimes, although public opposition to the war and concerns about being liable for atrocities have grown.
Approving weapons exports to Israel is also landing its allies in local or national courts. That has ramped up anxiety for governments that assumed their arms shipments were too small to attract international rage.
By far the largest exporter of weapons to Israel is the United States, which committed in 2016 to a 10-year, $38 billion military aid package, including $5 billion for missile defense, with grants that underwrite Israeli purchases from US defense companies.