Labour Foreign Secretary David Lammy has announced that 30 arms export licenses from the UK to Israel will be suspended, citing the “risk” that they might be used in breaches of international law. For one of the Israeli state’s key allies, this might sound at first like a departure from Labour’s usual uncritical support for the genocidal war on Gaza. However all it really amounts to is a performative gesture, made under the pressure of massive opposition from the mass protest movement in solidarity with Palestinians.
A basic look into what these measures are reveal how hollow they actually are. Firstly the suspension of certain arms export licenses just scratches the surface of the military and political support that the UK provides to the Israeli state. Only 30 out of a total of 350 were suspended, leaving more than 90% still in operation. What’s more, numerous exemptions exist which allow components made in the UK under international programmes to continue being exported. This includes parts for the F-35 fighter jet used by the Netanyahu regime to carry out bomb attacks on Gaza.
Meanwhile there are signs that the Royal Air Force may be flying surveillance missions over Gaza, to supply intelligence to Israel, and allowing Israeli planes and drones to operate out of British air bases in Cyprus. When independent MP Jeremy Corbyn put this question to Lammy in the House of Commons, he refused to give an answer.
Labour is keen to point out that this in no way reflects any withdrawal of support from the Israeli state’s war aims, or the brutal occupation and siege enforced on the people of Gaza. This is still the party whose leader stated he believed Israel had the “right” to cut off water and electricity from 2.2 million people trapped in the strip.
Pressure of the mass movement
This attempt to demonstrate a change in stance when it comes to Gaza is not motivated by genuine moral concerns about the death of tens of thousands of innocent people, or the displacement of hundreds of thousands. Instead it is about trying to defuse some of the rage and sense of betrayal aimed at the Labour Party for its support for the war and the political effects that the war is having in the UK. This same mood of resistance to Labour’s pro-imperialist policies also resulted in the important election of Jeremy Corbyn and four other anti-war independent left MPs.
Capitalist governments across the world have faced major opposition and mass movements for their role in aiding the genocidal onslaught. In Israel itself, members of Socialist Struggle Movement (ISA Israel-Palestine) have been taking part in the one-day protest strike called on 2 September, fighting to expand the action into all workplaces and calling for an end to the brutal oppression of Palestinians, ending Israeli capitalism and occupation, and for socialist change.
Time for a new left party against war and imperialism
Lammy’s performative suspension of arms licenses comes shortly after Corbyn announced he was forming an alliance with four other independent MPs in parliament on the basis of opposing the war, privatisation and austerity.
The setting up of this new ‘Independent Alliance’ is a positive step that has the potential to rattle Starmer’s government even further. Now is the time for this grouping to turn outwards, to go from being a mere grouping in parliament to the potential beginnings of a new left-wing party of struggle, capable of not only applying pressure to the ruling establishment, but to build a fighting, working-class anti-war political alternative.
