What are arms sales to Israel worth – and could they be stopped?
The UK government is under growing pressure to stop selling arms to Israel after the deaths of seven aid workers in a military strike. Kim Sengupta examines the scale of the industry from the UK and US – and what difference stopping sales would make
If Britain were to suspend arms sales to Israel, it would be joining Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Belgium, who have already done so with broad overall public support.
However, the value of UK arms exports to Israel is relatively low, amounting to £42m in 2022 out of global arms sales of £70.6bn for that year.
Germany has stated that it will continue with weapons exports for the time being, but it is said to be reviewing an Israeli request for additional tank ammunition as it faces legal action from a citizens’ group whose family members are among the casualties in Gaza.
Israel is heavily dependent on US military supplies – all but one of its foreign-made aircraft are American – but Britain supplies 15 per cent of the components of the US-made F-35 warplanes that have been used in Gaza.
Campaign Against Arms Trade estimates that work on the 36 F-35s exported to Israel prior to 2023 “has been worth at least £368m to the UK arms industry”.
Israel’s own arms firm, Elbit Systems, has long been targeted by protesters at its British facilities; the company’s premises in Kent were temporarily closed in March after activists blockaded the entrance. Also last month, seven other activists received suspended prison sentences for damage done to the firm’s offices in Bristol during a previous protest.
Elbit promotes the Hermes 450, thought to have been used in the deadly attack on a charity convoy, as “the backbone of the IDF”, saying it has flown 700,000 operational hours over the years. The company is producing two more advanced models, the Hermes 900 and the Hermes StarLiner, which it hopes will be bestsellers in the international arms market.
Bezhalel Machlis, Elbit’s chief executive, said recently that he expects the company’s revenue to grow by $500m (£395m) a year: “It’s crucial to support the IDF. The war is not positive, but we received a lot of orders and we expect to get more. There is a growing demand for our technology around the world.”
An officer in the British army’s Royal Artillery Regiment, which flies the Thales Watchkeeper drone, says the Watchkeeper WK450 “is very much a spin-off from the Hermes 450, so there is obviously a degree of technology transfer involved”.
Relations between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government have frayed significantly since the start of the war, with the US recently voting for a UN ceasefire resolution. Joe Biden has deplored the deadly strike on the aid convoy, saying he was “outraged and heartbroken” by what had happened. Israel had “not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians”, he said.
Peter Ricketts, a former senior diplomat who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee during the Blair government, is of the view that Washington may now reconsider its military links with Israel, saying: “I think each time there is another of these horrors, they must be getting closer to the point where the Americans start putting some restrictions on their arms.”
This is not something that is apparent at present.
On the same day that Biden condemned the Israeli attack, news broke that his administration was considering selling Israel up to 50 new F-15 fighter jets, 30 AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, and a number of joint direct attack munition (JDAM) kits, which turn “dumb bombs” into precision-guided weapons. On the previous day, it emerged that the US was moving forward with another arms package, including more than 1,800 MK-84 2,000lb bombs and 500 MK-82 500lb bombs.
Washington stresses that these weapons are not necessarily for use in Gaza, but could be used against any of the enemies Israel faces – including a well-armed Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as Iran and its proxy militias.
But critics say the Netanyahu government has more than enough stocks to deal with these threats for now, and the additional arsenal is not imperative.
Biden’s administration and the Democrats face a difficult choice in this election year. The failure to curb Israeli aggression in Gaza has led to the erosion of support from Muslim Americans, the young, and some liberals – risking the president’s chance of winning the key battleground state of Michigan, which may hold the key to the outcome of the election itself.
There is no guarantee that halting arms supplies now would get that support back. There is, however, the very real possibility that a total embargo would lead to Netanyahu arriving in America to denounce the move. He followed a similar course of action in 2015 after falling out with Barack Obama, addressing a joint session of Congress on a Republican invitation. Mike Johnson, the current Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, has already indicated that he intends to invite Netanyahu again this year.
The chances of America halting arms shipments, cutting off Israel’s main source of supply, looks highly unlikely, whichever course Britain decides to take on the matter.
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