UK should spike Israeli anti-tank missiles

Why should a country like Britain be so impressed by the Israeli-made Spike anti-tanks missiles (ATMs), which have only been used to kill civilians since it was put to practice about five years ago?

Not content with just supplying equipment, though indirectly, for Israel which is carrying out war crimes and a policy of aggression in the Occupied Territories, it seems the British government is set to reward this policy.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is poised to purchase Israeli Spike ATMs that were tested on Lebanese civilians during Israel's occupation of South Lebanon, and are now being used, indiscriminately, against Palestinian populations in West Bank and Gaza.

The MoD bought a number of these missiles in 2001, for $4.4 million, to assess their viability, and is reportedly giving the government the go ahead to buy 5,000 of them. A decision is expected in September this year.

Last month, UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, faced a Labour backlash in parliament over the approval of indirect exports to Israel. Britain's total military export to Israel was doubled this year.

This followed his announcement of updated rules, allowing BAe Systems to ship components for Israel F16 fighter planes to the United States, for use in jets being manufactured for the Israelis.

Straw said then that consent for the export of the British cockpit display units "reflected the changed nature of the global defence industry, where equipment made in one country often incorporated components which are made in another."

Supplying the units, he said "was part of the long-standing collaboration between the American and British defence industries." But he went on to acknowledge that he had had "to take a difficult and a tricky decision."

Wait a minute, Straw! If selling British cockpit's display units for the Israeli F-16 was "difficult and tricky", surely buying the Israeli Spike ATMs now under the bloody circumstances should be, one would expect, trickier and much more difficult.

Buying these missiles now is considered by Arabs, many Europeans and Israeli Peace Camp as a reward for Israel's aggression in the Occupied Territories. This kind of behaviour makes, to say the least, a mockery of the much-talked-about ethical foreign policy since New Labour took over in 1997.

The Israeli arms industry and armed forces used South Lebanon, during 22 years of occupation, as a practice firing-range for new military equipment, including the Spike 'family' of ATMs. The Lebanese Daily Star has catalogued occasions when missiles, then classified, were used against civilian targets.

Many of these targets are considered by international laws as war crimes. At times when The U.S. and Israel are collaborating to turn the rules of engagement in the world upside down, people around the world look for Britain and other European countries to hold the moral ground.

In February 1998 Spike ATMs was fired from an Israeli outpost at a civilian car in the village of Majdel-Silm, 7.5 km away. A United Nations peacekeeper in Lebanon described Spike as a "mini-cruise" missile.

Three months later, Moham-med Moqalled, 17, was killed and his brother severely wounded by a Spike missile launched from the same outpost. They were targeted while walking back from tending their beehives.

A UN spokesman commented then that Israel was using the occupied zone "as a testing range" to prove Spike's guidance system.

Three months later, at exactly the same location, the ATM was fired again, this time at three teenage boys – all wearing jeans and brightly coloured clothes – as they walked near their village. Rami Abu Zeid, 13, received missile fragments in his chest, stomach and shoulder.

In June 1999 a woman and a child were injured in a Spike missile attack while sitting in a house in the village of Qabriha. Lamia Khammas, 37, was seriously wounded in the head and Maryam Fahda, 3, was wounded in the leg.

Basically, Israel was using its occupation zone in South Lebanon to test the newly developed guided missile with the Lebanese as human guinea pigs, before placing the weapon on the international market.

That was in Lebanon. The Israeli military has also used Spike ATMs at civilian targets in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Its first overt use was in November 2000 on a civilian house in Beit Jala near Jerusalem. Other uses included the fledgling – and now destroyed – Gaza port.

Spike ATMs are produced by Israel's state-owned armaments company, Rafael. The head of Rafael's ATM division, Avraham Mazor, was quoted by the London weekly Jewish Chronicle as saying that Spike's sales potential "will reach more than $2 billion in five years."

The proposed sale to Britain's MoD, reported for £200 million, would be a considerable amount towards this figure. The total trade volume with Israel is about 2.8 billion pounds.

Recent military purchases from Israel also included missile launchers, jet fighter avionics and small arms ammunition. The Metropolitan and South Wales Police Forces buy Israeli soft-round bullets via the Samson Distraco Company in Leicestershire.

In addition to the cockpit display units supplied by BAe, Britain has supplied components for Israeli Merkava tanks (through Airtechnology Group), Apache helicopters (Smith Industries) and armoured personnel carriers (from converted Centurion tanks).

All these weapons have been used against civilian targets with devastating effect. Sadly, the British government's record on arms trade with Israel suggests that ethics play little, or no part in approving such sales.

"This weapon was tested on civilians of Lebanon and Palestine, both illegally occupied," says Labour MP John Austin. "This should be punished not rewarded".