London, January 16: The UK Human Rights campaigners have condemned disclosures that Israeli army was training British troops how to use attack drones as “shameful”.
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) allocated £1 billion to buy a consignment of watchkeeper UAV 450 drones, which are manufactured by Israeli arms company Elbit and its partner firm Thales UK, the daily Morning Star reported.
The British troops received training for how to deploy Hermes UAV 450 drones equipped with watchkeeper in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories, the report said.
A MoD spokeswoman confirmed that Israeli army was training British troops, saying “UK military personnel conduct training around the world to prepare for operations.”
“Small numbers of British forces travel to Israel for contractor-provided pre-deployment training on the unarmed Hermes 450 UAV and its replacement, the watchkeeper”, added the spokeswoman.
Human rights campaigners had roundly condemned Israeli regime for using the pilotless crafts during its 2008 war on Gaza. They said the Israeli army used the drones in its “extra-judicial” killings and “serious human rights abuses in Gaza.”
“It was wholly inappropriate for UK forces to be trained in the use of drones by an entity with a track record of applying this technology in grave abuses of people’s human rights,” said Amnesty International UK campaigns director Tim Hancock.
“There is already growing international concern over the use of drones in remote unlawful killings – sometimes amounting to extrajudicial executions,” he added.
Sarah Colborne of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said the Israeli regime was using Palestinians as “a testing ground” to develop its weaponry.
“It is obscene that Britain is sending troops to be trained by the Israeli army on the use of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were used to such lethal effect in Israel’s war on Gaza,” she said.
“Elbit not only commits human rights abuses against Palestinians with weapons made in UK factories, it also supports Israel’s illegal occupation through surveillance and electronics systems along the apartheid wall in the (occupied) West Bank and in surrounding settlements,” said War on Want spokeswoman Yasmin Khan.
“It is shameful that the British government is collaborating with a firm complicit in war crimes against the Palestinian people,” added Yasmin Khan.
——–Agencies