Nicholas Soames says end to weapons exports would send strong message on the crisis in Gaza
Britain’s ongoing arms sales to Israel have provoked bitter infighting within the Conservative party, as Rishi Sunak came under mounting pressure to halt weapons exports in light of the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Amid continued international anger after an Israeli drone strike killed seven aid workers in Gaza, Nicholas Soames, the veteran Tory peer, said the UK should send a message about Israel’s actions – the latest in a series of Conservative figures to call for an end to UK arms sales.
As Downing Street and David Cameron, the foreign secretary, remained largely silent, a furious row broke out over Israel’s actions, with the former minister Alan Duncan lambasting what he called pro-Israel “extremists” within the Tories, prompting the party to investigate his comments.
Keir Starmer also faces pressure to back an end to arms sales after Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, and Margaret Beckett, the Labour MP who was foreign secretary under Tory Blair, called on the government to consider immediate action.
Soames, a former minister who spent 36 years in the Commons before being made a peer, said that in the wake of the deaths of seven aid workers for World Central Kitchen, among them three Britons, the UK needed to stop providing Israel with arms.
He told the Guardian: “It’s probably time that that happened now, yes, I think if we’re determined to show that we are not prepared to countenance these ongoing disasters. Israel have every right to go after Hamas, there’s no shadow of doubt about that.”
The UK’s contribution to Israel’s arsenal “would be tiny and it’s probably parts more than anything else”, Soames said, adding: “I think it is the message that matters.”
Soames joins his fellow Conservative peer Hugo Swire and three Tory MPs – David Jones, Paul Bristow and Flick Drummond – in calling for arms sales to be suspended.
