War remains big business on a global scale - Christine Grahame

Thinking of something to write about led me through considering the misery for the people of Gaza, the continued assault on Ukraine and here at home the continuing pressures on our domestic budgets both in our own homes and for the Scottish government – I was trying to stay positive but the dank, dreich weather just seemed to fit my mood.

A man pushes a bicycle along as he walks amid building rubble in the devastated area around Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)

Now, I have written before of my heartfelt sympathy for the families and the captives held by Hamas not even knowing how many are alive and in what state. However, nothing, absolutely nothing, makes the assault on civilians in Gaza defensible.

Over 30,000 dead, many women and children, hospitals with no power, no food, no water then bombed. Starvation is rife and used as a weapon of war. Still the UK government and the official opposition talk the talk but do not walk the walk. Now with the death of aid workers, including three British citizens, who had advised the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) of their routes in advance, all that Rishi Sunak will say is that he wants a “thorough and transparent investigation” from Israel. Labour leader Keir Starmer in a statement said the deaths were "horrifying", calling for a “full investigation” and an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza. Words but not actions.

Did you know that the UK supplies the Israeli military with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of arms? Undoubtedly some of these have destroyed innocent Gaza lives and rendered their homes and communities to rubble. Actually, the true figure of these arms sales is shrouded in secrecy. Under open export licences, arms companies can export an unlimited quantity of specified equipment with no further monitoring and no tracking of their total value.

There have been calls to suspend these licences to Israel by some in the UK parliament, but this has yet to happen if it ever will. Indeed the UK is one of the top exporters of arms worldwide and these arms exports doubled during 2022 to a record £8.5 billion according to the only publicly available official figures, reflecting escalating geopolitical uncertainties and fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The largest destination for UK-made weaponry was Qatar, which bought £2.7bn-worth, and 54 per cent went to countries designated as “not free” by the human rights group Freedom House. These include Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Qatar.

That £8.5bn recorded in 2022 is a record since the UK began publishing export data in 2008, and is more than double the £4.1bn recorded in 2021. The previous high was £6.9bn in 2015, a time when Syria had collapsed into civil war. Even so, the true level of weapons exports is far greater because the value of a large proportion of UK arms sales is not counted. Only the value of single-use export licences is publicly released, while broader open-export licences, including much of the UK’s exports to Saudi Arabia, are not quantified.

War is indiscriminate, cruel and mostly the innocent suffer but it is also profitable. It is big business on a global scale. Are the UK government’s hands clean of this bloodshed, this famine in Gaza and around the world? There are certainly forces darker than the gloomy skies above me today.

Christine Grahame is an SNP MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale