Arms Export Licences: Israel Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business and Trade
Kenny MacAskill
Main Page: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)Department Debates - View all Kenny MacAskill's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
I endorse everything that the mover, the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), very eloquently said. Equally, in the limited time left, I want to comment on the issues raised by others around complicity. That can be direct or indirect, and the mover, as I say, very eloquently dealt with the direct. The indirect has obviously been touched upon by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). If we are facilitating the supply of weaponry to Israel by the Americans flying out of RAF Akrotiri, that is simply unacceptable and we are complicit. Not only do the Republic of Cyprus Government have a right to know what is happening at a sovereign UK airbase—so do the citizens of the United Kingdom. We need to know that there is no complicity there.
Secondly—I am conscious of time and others coming in—we have, according to a parliamentary question, been giving military aid to Israel, but it has been restricted to medical supplies. Now, that on its own sounds very grand: we have only given medical supplies since 7 October. However, that does not mean vaccinations for children or hip replacements for the elderly. It can only be described as medical aid for combat trauma. The equipment that is itemised in parliamentary answer 5416 is not going into an Israeli sitcom-version of “M*A*S*H”. It is not for something funny. It is being used by Israeli soldiers who are killed or injured in the Gaza strip.
I wish no one ill—not an Israeli soldier, nor indeed a Palestinian civilian—but we should not be supplying equipment that can only be described as for combat. That, by the broadest sense of the imagination, cannot be described as humanitarian aid. It is aid to the Israeli military; it is aid to comfort their soldiers. They require comfort, but they should not be doing this and we should not be supplying it.