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Dirty secret of Israel\u2019s weapons exports: They\u2019re tested on Palestinians | Israel-Palestine conflict<\/p>\n
Amman, Jordan \u2013<\/strong> The Israeli army released footage on October 22 of its Maglan commando unit deploying a new precision-guided 120mm mortar bomb called the Iron Sting, against Hamas in Gaza.<\/p>\n The bomb\u2019s Haifa-based manufacturer, Elbit Systems, has been advertising its qualities on the public relations page of its website since March 2021, when it was integrated into the Israeli military.<\/p>\n Benny Gantz, then Israel\u2019s defence minister and now a part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s war cabinet, described the Iron Sting as \u201cdesigned to engage targets precisely, in both open terrains and urban environments, while reducing the possibility of collateral damage and preventing injury to non-combatants\u201d.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a claim echoed by Mark Regev, Netanyahu\u2019s former spokesperson, for the country\u2019s overall approach to its war on Gaza, in which, he has said, Israel is \u201ctrying to be as surgical as humanly possible\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet, more than one month after Israel launched the aerial bombardment of Gaza following a surprise Hamas attack, it has killed at least 11,400 Palestinian civilians, and injured 30,000 in the besieged strip and the occupied West Bank. More than 4,700 of Gaza\u2019s children are dead. Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people in their October 7 attack.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s devastatingly \u201csurgical\u201d killing machines, tested on Palestinians, have global takers, say analysts.<\/p>\n Ahmed Saeed al-Najar, 28, was driving his taxi in Rafah during Gaza\u2019s third war of 2014 when a drone missile came in through the open sunroof of his taxi. It exploded in the car, instantly decapitating and killing all six of his passengers, his best friend included.<\/p>\n The car had been targeted by an Israeli Spike drone rocket, which can be modified to carry a fragmentation sleeve of thousands of 3mm tungsten cubes, said to affect an area of approximately 20 metres in diameter. The cubes puncture metal and \u201ccause tissue to be torn from flesh\u201d, literally shredding anyone within range, according to Erik Fosse, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza.<\/p>\n Al-Najar, rescued from the wreckage of his car, suffered extensive burns, the loss of his right eye, multiple shrapnel wounds and the loss of his right leg from the mid-thigh point, amputated by the blast.<\/p>\n But by 2014, drones that carry the Spike rocket had already become highly sought-after by other countries.<\/p>\n The Heron TP \u201cEitan\u201d drone is Israel\u2019s largest unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and was brought into service in 2007. Manufactured by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) \u2014 Israel\u2019s largest aerospace and defence company and the country\u2019s largest industrial exporter \u2013 it can fly up to 40 hours continuously and can carry four Spike missiles.<\/p>\n The Eitan was first used during \u201cOperation Cast Lead\u201d in the 2008-09 Gaza war for attacks against civilians, according to the non-governmental organisation, Drone Wars UK. According to Defence for Children International, of the 353 children killed and 860 injured during Operation Cast Lead, 116 died from missiles launched by drones.<\/p>\n After the war, IAI witnessed a surge in orders of Heron variant drones from at least 10 countries between 2008-2011. During this period, more than 100 drones were purchased, leased or acquired under joint venture schemes.<\/p>\n India \u2013 Israel\u2019s largest military buyer, which operates more than 100 Israeli-made UAVs \u2013 purchased 34 Heron drones in this period, followed by France (24), Brazil (14) and Australia (10), according to a 2014 report by Drone Wars UK.<\/p>\n That does not mean that Israel wages wars to advertise its weapons, said experts. \u201cNobody fights wars just to show off their weapons,\u201d said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King\u2019s College London.<\/p>\n Yet, at the same time, \u201cin every war against Gaza a range of weapons and surveillance tech has been deployed against the Palestinians which is then marketed and sold to huge amounts of nations around the world,\u201d said Antony Loewenstein, independent journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory.<\/p>\n Weapons exports have uses beyond the revenue they bring to Israel.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s more than that, it\u2019s also an insurance policy to insulate themselves from the intense pressure to change their behaviour over the decades-long occupation of Palestinians,\u201d said Loewenstein.<\/p>\n Last month, Colombian President Gustavo Petro refused to condemn the surprise attack launched by Hamas on October 7 as a \u201cterrorist attack\u201d instead responding that \u201cterrorism is killing innocent children in Palestine\u201d.<\/p>\n In response, the Israeli government halted all sales of defence and security equipment and associated services to the Latin American country.<\/p>\n Colombia is one of an estimated 130 countries that have bought weapons, drones and cyberspying technology from Israel, the world\u2019s 10th-largest weapons exporter.<\/p>\n Israel is, by far, the world\u2019s largest exporter of military drones: in 2017, it was estimated that it was behind nearly two-thirds of all UAV exports over the previous three decades.<\/p>\n Elbit, the maker of the Iron Sting, provides up to 85 percent of the land-based equipment procured by the Israeli military and about 85 percent of its drones, according to Database of Israeli Military and Security Export (DIMSE).<\/p>\n But after the 2014 Gaza war, its export market expanded significantly, too. Erbit promotes its Hermes UAVs as \u201ccombat-proven\u201d and the \u201cprimary platform of the IDF in counter-terror operations\u201d.<\/p>\n The Hermes 450 and Hermes 900 were both used extensively in \u201cOperation Protective Edge\u201d, Israel\u2019s 2014 war, during which 37 percent of fatalities were attributed to drone attacks, according to an estimate by the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.<\/p>\n Elbit subsequently secured contracts for the new Hermes 900 drone with more than 20 countries worldwide including the Philippines, which purchased 13, as well as India, Azerbaijan, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Iceland, the European Union, Mexico, Switzerland and Thailand. In March 2023, Elbit Systems announced their 120th order for the Hermes 900.<\/p>\n The new \u201cNizoz\u201d (Spark) surveillance drone manufactured by Rafael, a state-owned weapons contractor that forms the Big Three of Israel\u2019s arms industry with IAI and Elbit, has reportedly now entered the current Gaza war. Rafael has an order backlog which currently stands at $10.1bn.<\/p>\n Al Jazeera approached Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and IAI for comment but the firms were yet to respond before time of publication.<\/p>\n For all of its military export successes, the full extent of Israel\u2019s defence industry sales remains masked.<\/p>\n A report from Amnesty International in 2019 noted that the whole process by which Israel sells arms is shrouded in secrecy \u201cwith no documentation of sales, one cannot know when [these arms] were sold, by which company, how many and so on\u201d.<\/p>\n Amnesty found that \u201cIsraeli companies exported weapons which reached their destination after a series of transactions, thereby skirting international monitoring\u201d.<\/p>\n Israel has not ratified the Arms Trade Treaty, which prohibits the sale of weapons at risk of being used in genocide and crimes against humanity. As such, its weapons exports have influenced the course of history for several nations, many led by controversial regimes.<\/p>\n Israel sold weapons to the South African apartheid government in 1975 and even agreed to supply nuclear warheads, according to declassified documents \u2013 though Israel denies doing so. Napalm and other weapons were supplied to El Salvador during its counterinsurgency wars between 1980-1992 that killed more than 75,000 civilians.<\/p>\n In 1994, Israeli-made bullets, rifles and grenades were allegedly used in Rwanda\u2019s genocide which killed at least 800,000 people. Israel supplied weapons to the Serbian army that waged war against Bosnia from 1992-1995.<\/p>\n Despite the Israeli government\u2019s own statement in 2018 declaring it had ceased sales to Myanmar, the Haaretz newspaper reported last year that weapons manufacturers continued supplying the military government until 2022, in violation of the 2017 international arms embargo against the country.<\/p>\n And, in September this year, Israel supplied UAVs, missiles and mortars to Azerbaijan for its campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, during which 100,000 ethnic Armenians were displaced.<\/p>\n Part of what makes it hard to track Israeli weapons exports is the very nature of the arms trade. \u201cGovernments buy and sell to each other directly and through their large defence contractors, but also there is a parallel trade by private firms that is usually not illegal but provides plausible deniability,\u201d Stephen Badsey, professor of conflict studies at Wolverhampton University, said.<\/p>\n The largest single control that seller nations maintain over the use of their weapons by other countries is the requirement for \u201cend user\u201d or \u201cend use\u201d rules, Badsey said. But as a major weapons exporter that doesn\u2019t subscribe to the Arms Trade Treaty, Israel has built a reputation for loose export norms.<\/p>\n In 2018, former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said he would ask his military to purchase weapons exclusively from Israel because, unlike the United States or Europe, Israel did not impose restrictions.<\/p>\n New government regulations introduced last year will allow Israel to sell more weapons to a greater range of countries without licences \u2013 and so, with less oversight. It pays: Israeli weapon export figures have doubled over the past decade, totalling $12.5bn last year.<\/p>\n Two days after the October 7 Hamas attack, Israel\u2019s minister of defence Yoav Gallant compared the Palestinian people with \u201chuman animals\u201d.<\/p>\n To Loewenstein, the dehumanising comments were unsurprising. \u201cIt is obvious over Israel\u2019s occupation and countless wars that Palestinians are treated as second-class citizens. Like animals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Over the years, the Israeli army has tested rubber bullets, artificial intelligence-powered robotic guns and various forms of crowd dispersal solutions, which have inflicted severe injuries on Palestinians.<\/p>\n Nabeel al-Shawa, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon who has worked in Gaza since 1978, treated many Palestinians wounded by Israeli firing on the Great March of Return in 2018 \u2013 when tens of thousands of Palestinians demanded they be allowed to return to the land they were forcibly removed from in 1948.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Israeli snipers, this was merely target practice with humans,\u201d he said. \u201cMost patients had been shot in joints deliberately to cause maximum damage, but not kill.<\/p>\n \u201cThese new rounds the Israeli army used caused injuries I have never seen before. In some cases the limb appeared intact, however, during surgery, I could not distinguish between bone and soft tissue.\u201d<\/p>\n So can Israeli weapons manufacturers legitimately market their weaponry as \u201cbattle proven\u201d when the combat often targets unarmed civilians?<\/p>\n They can, said Zoran Kusovac, a geopolitical and security analyst.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a weapon\u2019s main purpose is proven in the actual battlefield or in as near realistic circumstances as possible, then they are battle proven,\u201d he said. \u201cYou cannot blame countries for buying from Israel. You can test all you want in a lab, but Israel is testing in the field, and as there are never any lags of time between one period of combat to the next, the development cycle is virtually in real time.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd there is of course that adage; that if it\u2019s good enough for the IDF, then it must be good enough for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, last week said in a press statement that medical teams in the enclave had \u201cobserved severe burns on the bodies of Palestinians who were killed and wounded by Israel\u2019s bombs\u00a0 \u2013 whether caused by an unknown weapon or not \u2013 is something they have not seen in previous conflicts\u201d.<\/p>\n Dr Ahmed el-Mokhallalati from the burn and plastic surgery division at al-Shifa Hospital, in an interview with the Toronto Star, described the wounds as \u201cvery deep \u2013 third and fourth-degree burns, and the skin tissue is impregnated with black particles and most of the skin thickness and all the layers underneath are burned down to the bone\u201d.<\/p>\n El-Mokhallalati said that these weren\u2019t phosphorus burns, \u201cbut a combination of some kind of incendiary bomb wave and other components\u201d.<\/p>\n The Israeli military has not commented so far on the statement made by Gaza\u2019s Ministry. But the mystery incendiary bombs, the Iron Sting\u2019s debut and the reported use of the new Spark drone in the current war suggest that Israel is once again testing new weapons in conflict.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael\u2019s weapons will continue to remain attractive to international buyers based on performance in the occupation,\u201d Loewenstein said. \u201cBut Israel is not just selling weapons; they\u2019re selling the ideology to other countries \u2013 of getting away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0635\u062f\u0631<\/a>\u2018Tissue torn from flesh\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018An insurance policy\u2019<\/h2>\n
Hard to track<\/h2>\n
Battle proven on \u2018human animals\u2019<\/h2>\n
New weapons test in Gaza 2023?<\/h2>\n
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