Scotland: Prestwick, a staging post for US armaments to Israel
01 May 2006
On 28 July the
Daily Telegraph newspaper revealed that Prestwick airport, near Glasgow, Scotland, was "being used as a staging post for major shipments of bunker-busting bombs from the USA to Israel". From the airport the weapons were being shipped to Israel for use in Lebanon. The Israeli air force's bombing of cities has been widely accused of indiscriminately targeting Lebanese citizens and the country's infrastructure. The Israeli attacks prompted many protests across the world, and a protest in London saw more than 100,000 people march through central London in solidarity with the Lebanese people. Prestwick has also been identified by the Scottish National Party as a transit point through which US rendition victims pass on route to Guantanamo Bay or other secret sites used by the US and its allies to incarcerate and torture political opponents.
The news that US cargo planes, filled with the 5,000 lb GBU-28 guided bomb units on route to Israel, had refuelled at Prestwick airport, and later at military bases, was greeted with outrage in Scotland. The GBU-28 guided bomb units, were designed to penetrate hardened targets before exploding, and it is capable of passing through 100 feet of earth or 20 feet of concrete. First used in the US invasion of Iraq in 1991, they were sold to the IDF in April this year as part of an arms deal that has been approved in the US. David Robertson, in
The Times newspaper, reports that Israel has more than US $4 billion in outstanding military credit with the US, and it is thought that the 100 GBU-28's ordered by Israel could cost £30 million; an accompanying JP8 jet fuel order could be worth another $210 million. In all Israel receives $2.6 billion in military financing from the US annually and almost all of the money goes back to US companies in what European defence contractors have described as a subsidy.
The use of Prestwick as a staging post to send arms to Israel, initially without the US even informing the UK, prompted Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, to lodge a formal complaint about the overriding of the normal procedures - which the US described as a "failure to complete the paperwork". Subsequent flights were diverted to a US military base. Politicians from the Scottish National Party (SNP), the Conservative Party and the even the Scottish Labour Party, whose Irene Oldfeather expressed her view that the arms shipment was "inappropriate", objected to British support for the Israeli invasion.
The Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) says that the UK government licensed the export of arms worth £2.25 million to Israel in 2005; this was more than twice the amount in 2004. The exports include bombs, rockets, torpedoes, machine guns, missiles, mines and components for tanks and combat aircraft. The F-16 fighter planes and Apache helicopters used by Israel to bomb Lebanese and Palestinian towns and villages contain components supplied by the UK. Despite the United Nations belief that "Israel violates humanitarian law" the sale of British arms occurs in disregard of the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria, which asses "the impact on regional peace, security and stability and the human rights record of the recipient." The UK also spends millions of pounds each year on arms from Israeli companies.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) called for the government to end UK involvement "as a staging post for supplying weapons of mass destruction" and a legal challenge to halt the use of all airports and military bases for US bomb flights was launched in Glasgow. The Trident Ploughshares group undertook a series of "weapons inspections" of US military planes at Prestwick to investigate "the involvement by the British authorities in covert and active collusion in Israeli air force crimes in Lebanon" after identifying freighters run by Atlas Air, "a civilian airline connected to the US military." A spokesperson said:
We acted as War