Owen Jones: Horrors in Gaza will go on until West ends complicity

Yet this week, the UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron doubled down – even as Gaza is razed from the face of the earth, the position was “unchanged”.

It should not take the spilling of Western blood to make this point – given the mass slaughter endured by the Palestinian people, including more than 200 aid workers – but even the Israeli military killing three Britons working with World Central Kitchen hasn’t shifted the Government’s position.

You can only imagine what would have happened if, say, Iran had blown up an aid convoy in similar circumstances.

READ MORE: Humza Yousaf demands UK Government end Israeli arms sales

According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade, the seven aid workers were killed by a Hermes 450 drone, which is powered by a UK-made R902(W) Wankel Engine.

That a leaked recording of senior Tory MP Alicia Kearns – the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee – made clear that the Government had received legal advice that Israel is violating international humanitarian law, clear to anyone at this point who isn’t either deceitful or living in a parallel universe.

That would necessitate stopping arms sales, as well as the sharing of intelligence.

Yet the British government remains determined to continue its complicity with one of the great crimes of our age.

It has shown it does not care if tens of thousands of Palestinians face slaughter; now we have established that even the butchering of its own citizens won’t budge its position.

The Conservatives are a party with a penchant for accusing their opponents of hating their own country and putting their own people at risk.

So note how Suella Braverman – likely to position herself as the demagogic ultra-nationalist successor to Rishi Sunak after the Tories’ coming electoral rout – engaged in truly bizarre meetings with Israeli officials, while suggesting we all move on from “a terrible mistake for which Israel has rightly apologised.”

A terrible mistake?

Well, that’s one way of describing what happened to seven aid workers operating in a deconflicted zone, with “World Central Kitchen” emblazoned on their vans, who shared their coordinates with the Israeli military on a pre-approved route – and then an Israeli drone chased them from car to car, firing three precision missiles until all were killed.

Note that the British government has failed to demand that Israel publicly release all of the unedited drone footage for independent analysis, and that Western media outlets have been silent about such a demand, too.

The Israeli investigation was an absurd whitewash, suggesting a military which describes itself as amongst the world’s most advanced made a “grave mistake” by exterminating the convoy in these circumstances.

Well, it gets so much worse. A fascinating piece of investigative journalism in The Telegraph – not words you often read me type – has a sensational finding.

The most senior commander in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) dismissed for his role in the attack is a hard-line settler in the West Bank who, in an open letter signed in January, demanded Gaza was deprived of aid.

It demanded the Israeli War Cabinet and the IDF chief of staff “do everything in your power” to prevent “humanitarian supplies and the operation of hospitals inside Gaza City”.

Here’s another astonishing detail: the retired military officer who led the investigation into the strike is the CEO of the defence firm that makes the drone missiles used in the strike. 

Well, you don’t need to be a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist to ask searching questions. From the very start, Israeli leaders – amongst them the Israeli defence minister – and officials made clear they intended to deprive the population of Gaza of the necessities of life.

They have succeeded in doing so in a variety of ways: multiple delays and blocks for aid to get in; slaughtering Palestinian aid workers; closing several aid crossing points; destroying agriculture and food production; allowing far-right protesters to stop aid getting in; destroying roads and infrastructure; attempting to destroy Gaza’s main humanitarian agency, UNRWA; butchering police officers charged with guarding trucks; preventing aid from entering famine-afflicted northern Gaza at all – we could go on.

Indeed, the UN notes that what are described as “trucks” by Israel are in fact only half full. “There is a lot less than meets the eye so far,” says former Biden official Jeremy Konyndyk, now president of Refugees International Aid, adding “very little has changed.”

After Israel withdrew from the southern city of Khan Younis, scenes of utter devastation were revealed: 90% of buildings are estimated to be destroyed.

Estimates of those buried under the rubble – excluded from the official death toll of more than 33,000 – have gone up to 20,000, and that’s not including those dying because of a destroyed healthcare system or lack of food, for example.

With most of Gaza’s population in Rafah, on the border of Egypt, we can see what beckons for them. But all of this is made possible by British arms as well as diplomatic support.

It must be repeated over and over and over again, but this is a grave crime. Scotland stood against it, and has been vindicated in the worst possible way.

For the people of Gaza, the refusal of other Western countries to take the same courageous stance means a horror with no end even in sight.