UK Prime Minister David Cameron has responded to a letter sent by UNA-UK's Chairman, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, on 12 August. The letter urged the Prime Minister to do everything in his power to alleviate the suffering and support a sustainable solution in Gaza.
In his letter, Sir Jeremy proposed the following measures to Mr Cameron:
- Suspend the granting of future arms export licences and revoke existing arms export licenses to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)
- Strongly support UN efforts to investigate alleged war crimes and encourage accountability on both sides
- Continue to facilitate economic development in the OPT, and call for the removal of restrictions not justified on security grounds
- Push for a greater role for the United Nations in seeking a sustainable peace
Mr Cameron writes that he has “urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to do everything he can to avoid civilian casualties” and to comply with Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law. He expresses the need for both sides to cooperate with the UN Commission of Inquiry into potential war crimes, and agrees that the United Nations has a central role to play in the development of a durable solution to the violence.
On arms export licences, it is disappointing that Mr Cameron reiterates the policy announced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on 12 August to suspend existing arms export licences to Israel only upon resumption of “significant hostilities”.
As a member of the UK Working Group on Arms (UKWG), UNA-UK submitted evidence to the Committees on Arms Export Controls, stating:
The UKWG believes that by linking the suspension of licences to an arbitrary and subjective threshold such as resumption of “significant hostilities” the Government has set a fundamentally dangerous and alarming precedent for the future application of UK arms export policy. In doing so, we believe that it has essentially re-written existing rules in place which state that “the Government will not grant a licence if there is a clear risk that the items might be used for internal repression [or] … in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.
UNA-UK believes that on the basis of the existing rules, the threshold to suspend and/or revoke the licences in question has already been met. We therefore reaffirm our call to the UK Government. We also hope the UK will affirm that “a resumption of significant hostilities” will not be used as a threshold by which export licences are assessed in future.
Action update
In August we asked our members and supporters to support Sir Jeremy's call for action from David Cameron. More than 50 personalised letters were shared with us by those who participated in the action which we hope will have drawn constructive and targeted attention to the situation, the issues surrounding which are still relevant today.
