[R-G] The Facade of Arms Control

[Richard Menec]

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3412

The Facade of Arms Control

July 23, 2009

Corporate Watch's new project, 'mapping the arms trade', will map the 
physical locations of arms companies across the UK and examine the UK arms 
industry. It will also be necessary to unravel the web of contradictory 
government statements and figures about the arms trade through which the 
state gives an impression of control on arms exports. In this first article, 
Corporate Watch focuses on UK arms sales to Israel.

This week the press variously celebrated and bemoaned the UK refusal of a 
few export licenses for components for Saar gunships to Israel. The 
Jerusalem Post claimed that Britain had blocked a 'third of all arms exports 
to Israel this year' while the Daily Mail 'accused' Miliband of imposing a 
partial embargo on Israel and claimed, falsely, that Miliband 'decided to 
revoke all arms export licenses to Tel Aviv following the (Gaza) offensive'. 
In fact the government had revoked five, out of 182, existing licenses to 
Israel.

When it comes to the issue of arms sales to Israel the British government 
likes to try to position itself on both sides of the fence. Or, put another 
way, likes to try to convince the public that arms to Israel are restricted 
while allowing the arms industry freedom to export exactly what they want.

Since the invasion of Gaza during January 2009, where Israel presented the 
world with a catalogue of war crimes enabled by a plentiful supply of 
foreign weapons, the UK's exports to Israel have come under increased 
scrutiny. In January hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, 
trashed businesses linked to the occupation and pelted the Israeli embassy 
with shoes. In actions throughout January solidarity activists caused 
hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage to EDO MBM/ITT in Brighton, 
blockaded BAE systems in Newcastle, demonstrated outside UAV engines in 
Lichfield and occupied the roof of Raytheon in Bristol for over five weeks. 
In February Amnesty International reported that components from UAV engines 
in Lichfield had probably been utilised in Israeli drones during the bombing 
of Gaza and that an arms embargo should be imposed against Israel.

The result of this public resistance and general outcry over arms to Israel 
is that the government, at first, responded by saying it could not be sure 
that British weapons were not used during the Gaza bombardment. Then, in 
April, David Miliband admitted that British weapons had, in fact, without 
doubt been used in Gaza, predominantly, he said, in Israeli F-16s, Apache 
helicopters and Saar gunships . All but the latter were exported to the US 
and re-exported to Israel. The government promised to review all extant 
export licences to Israel in the light of the 'new situation' after 
Operation Cast Lead. Miliband said, in April, that "I can confirm that we 
are looking at all licenses to see whether there is any need for 
reconsideration in the light of recent events in Gaza," In July the Foreign 
Office announced that, as a result of this increased scrutiny, it had 
reviewed its export licenses to Israel and had disallowed five licenses on 
the ground that they could be used for 'repression'. These were the licenses 
relating to the Saar Courvette gunship, the only weapon directly exported to 
Israel that Miliband had admitted that Israel used in Gaza.

The corporate media, whatever side of the fence they may be on, have sought 
to make much of these license refusals as a step toward further control of, 
or an embargo on, arms to Israel. It is worth noting that this facade is 
what the government wanted to achieve. The state's policy on arming Israel 
in the last ten years has been simple; to allow as much as possible, the 
unfettered export of weapons components bound for Israel from British 
companies and, in the face of growing public opposition and resistance, to 
create the false impression that arms exports are subject to strict 
controls. After the public bouts of resistance in 2002, following the 
Israeli invasion of the West Bank and Gaza and crushing of the Palestinian 
authority, Jack Straw tightened controls on direct exports but not on parts 
being exported via the US. After the far more effective resistance to the 
Israeli invasion of Lebanon of 2006, where a citizens decommissioning took 
place at Raytheon in Derry and break ins occurred at bases where US planes 
were refueling en route to take arms to Israel, the government imposed 
stricter restrictions on export of components for the F-16. However, actual 
UK arms exports to Israel are increasing steadily. So what is exactly is 
being exported?

The government claims that heavy weapons, such as tanks, warships and 
artillery have not been granted export licenses to Israel since 1997 and 
according to Bill Rammell, no license for a 'whole item' (that is, 
presumably, a whole weapon) has been approved since 2002. Perhaps this is 
why British companies have become so prominent in the manufacture of 
electrical weapons components. One such company EDO MBM/ITT who manufacture 
circuit boards, arming units and bomb racks designed specifically for use 
with the Israeli F-16 bomb carriage, the VER-2 have been subject to a 
relentless direct action campaign in Brighton (see www.smashedo.org.uk). As 
a result of the campaign the company has become symbolic of an industry 
that, as one campaigner put it, makes 'the nuts and bolts and bits and bobs 
that make weapons work'. Amnesty International, in their report, Fueling 
Conflict, state that 'the introduction in 2002 of revised UK guidelines for 
the control of exports of components for incorporation in military systems 
were specifically intended to allow the export of UK components to the USA 
for incorporation in military equipment such as F-16 combat aircraft and 
Apache combat helicopters which were known be exported to Israel' but that, 
conveniently, 'details contained within UK government reports do not allow 
for a meaningful assessment of the end-user of this equipment' .

One smokescreen to public understanding of the issue is the lack of 
available information on exports. The government does not publish details of 
the individual products being exported or the corporations exporting them. 
The Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) 
publishes details of export licenses which have been approved, refused and 
their value but no details on what, specifically, has been exported or by 
who. Another stumbling block, in terms of the possibility of public 
knowledge, is the unavailability of information relating to arms exports 
through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. For example, FOI requests 
asking for information on EDO MBM/ITT's exports to Israel have been 
uniformly refused and are now subject to a claim against the information 
commissioner.

The government, during and since the Gaza invasion, made use of the lack of 
public understanding about the nature of export licenses to make 
disingenuous statements about its exports to Israel. In January both Bill 
Rammell and David Miliband claimed that Britain had not granted licenses for 
goods associated with armoured personnel carriers, F 16s or Apache 
helicopters since the Israeli bombing of Lebanon in 2006. To the average 
observer this might suggest that no exports had occurred since 2006. The 
reality is that many export licenses granted to UK companies are 'Open 
General Individual Export Licenses' (OGIELs) which allow the export of a 
category of equipment from the UK military list until the license is 
revoked, in theory the licenses can remain in place forever (although 
apparently they are usually reviewed every five years). So, to imply that 
the fact that no licenses had been granted since 2006 meant that arms 
exports to Israel were tightly controlled is a travesty, what about all the 
license granted before 2006 that still remain in place. Bearing in mind that 
OGIELs still remain in place since pre-2006 and that this statement may not 
encompass component parts of weapons, it is necessary to look at actual 
export figures. In fact, according to figures quoted in Amnesty 
International's recent report, Fueling Conflict, actual direct exports from 
the UK to Israel have increased more than tenfold since 2006. From the 
Export Control Organisation's reports we can see that, licenses granted 
included, for example, 'components for combat aircraft', 'components for 
military electronic equipment', 'components for airborne electronic warfare 
equipment' and 'components for unmanned aerial vehicles' .

The UK's tightening of arms control after bouts of Israeli repression is 
matched by a liberal flow of arms in the run up to them. In 2002, as Israel 
was gearing up Operation Defensive Shield, UK arms exports to Israel 
doubled. In 2005, the year before Israel's attack on Lebanon which killed 
over a thousand people in less than a month, the UK exported £22.5 million 
worth of arms to Israel, twice the amount exported in 2004. In the first 
three quarters of 2008, prior to Israel's attack on Gaza, Britain exported 
£27 million worth of arms to Israel - an unprecedented amount.

It is worth saying, however, that the UK's steps to revoke export licenses 
show that the government perceives a need to provide a sop to public dissent 
against exports to Israel. The strength of resistance in the UK, 
unprecedented in any other country outside the Middle-East, to the Gaza 
bombing and the growing movement in solidarity with Palestine has clearly 
disturbed the government. This can be seen, elsewhere, in DEFRA's 
consideration of legality of the sale of Israeli settlement goods in the UK 
and in the British embassy's cancellation of a move of its offices into a 
property owned by an Israeli settlement developer.

The state is responding to widespread resistance to arms exports to Israel 
steadily imposing controls on the arms industry which they hope that 
companies will be able to circumvent. In turn, the arms industry has 
responded by moving into the market for components incorporated into US 
weapons bound for Israel. In that context the companies profiting the most 
from Israel's war crimes may be those manufacturing 'the bits and bobs' that 
make the weapons work.