‘When the British Army decided to spend £800 million on a new fleet of 54 reconnaissance drones, it chose to buy the Watchkeeper, a variant of Israel’s Hermes 450. This order is now being delivered by a joint venture controlled by ………. an Israeli defence company.’

Was this a consideration that persuaded the Cameron government to change the law on Universal Jurisdiction to allow Israeli military personnel to visit the UK without fear of private prosecution for alleged war crimes and could it be a factor in the overt support of Mr Cameron for the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) lobby in Westminster? Could it also be the reason that this government takes no action to prevent Israel’s continued expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that clearly violate international human rights law – or are all of these facts merely coincidental circumstance?

Whichever it is, it would appear to be dangerous in the extreme to allow Britain’s national security to be interdependent upon a non-European, undeclared, nuclear power in the Middle East that treats both the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions with such  contempt.

When taken together with other, unpublished, defence contracts, it is essential that the British people be made fully aware of the extent and scale of Israeli government collaboration that has been allowed to take place within the security of the United Kingdom, bearing in mind that the state of Israel is in the Middle East, not Europe, and just as obviously, is a non-member of the European Union and is not subject to its laws.

This is a concerning situation that would not appear to be in the interests of the national security and defence systems of either Britain, or the EU.

Notes