Britain’s Role in the Israeli-Hezbollah War

[donsu]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14938.htm

Whilst Israel’s close relationship with the US is well known, and has long been the focus of debate, no comprehensive discussion of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war should allow the role of the British government to pass without comment. London was accused of “standing back and doing nothing” during the conflict. But on the contrary, it played an active role in supporting Israel’s actions, supplying substantial military, diplomatic and political support. (1)

Military Support
Though the US is Israel’s major military ally, Britain also helps to arm the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Since the Oslo Accords were signed Britain has sold Israel submarines, combat helicopters, combat aircraft, tanks, bombs, torpedoes, rockets, missiles, mines, machine guns, ammunition and electronic equipment according to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade. Between 2004 and 2005, arms exports to Israel approved by the government doubled to £22.5m. In contravention of the government’s own guidelines prohibiting the sale of weapons likely to be used "aggressively against another country" or fuel regional tensions, Britain provided Israel with key components for Apache combat helicopters, F-15 and F-16 fighter jets deployed in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. (2)

Britain also gave active military support to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, granting permission to refuel at British airports to US flights carrying shipments of arms to the front, after the Irish government denied Washington such permissions. In late July, as the conflict escalated, sources at one of those airports told The Times that by that stage the number of refuelling stops had become “absolutely unreal”. (3)

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Diplomatic Support

As Lebanon was being “torn to shreds”, “cut to pieces” and subjected to “barbaric destruction”, in the words of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, British diplomats worked to head off any pressure on Israel from the international community. At the UN security council on 14 July, the G8 on July 16 and the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on 17 July, British efforts helped to block international calls for an immediate ceasefire. On 21 July, a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, overwhelmed by the number of casualties, began burying the dead in a temporary mass grave. On 25 July, a coalition of the leading aid agencies urged the Prime minister in an open letter “to rethink your policy as a matter of urgency and do what you can to reduce the horrific toll that this conflict is having on ordinary people across the region.”. The next day, at a crisis summit in Rome, Britain again joined the US in blocking calls for an immediate ceasefire. On 1 August, another meeting of EU foreign ministers failed to call for an immediate ceasefire at Britain’s insistence, ignoring further pleas from Oxfam, who described “levels of destruction of civilian infrastructure” as “catastrophic”. (14)
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smirk's pet Blair and Britain are complicite