Former Tory minister: Britain should stop arms sales to Israel

Former Conservative cabinet minister David Jones told Middle East Eye that support for Israel in the British ruling party was due to the success of its pro-Israel lobby group.

Jones also demanded that Britain should end its arms sales to Israel and broke with the Tory leadership by describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as “disproportionate”. He added that he believed a Labour government would not have handled the war any differently to the Conservatives.

Jones, a senior Tory who served as Secretary of State for Wales between 2012 and 2014 and deputy chairman of the European Research Group since 2020, remained Conservative MP for Clwyd West in Wales until May 30, when Parliament was dissolved for the general election.

He is resigning as a member of Parliament and will not run for his seat in the July 4 vote.

In a wide-ranging and candid interview with Middle East Eye, Jones set out his thoughts on Britain’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza, which largely contradicts the positions of the Tory leadership.

He called the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, an “atrocity,” adding that he believed the Palestinian group was “clearly encouraged by Iran to do what it did.”

“Israel obviously has the right to defend itself,” he said. “If there were a similar attack on British interests, we would not question our right to respond.”

“Horrible destruction”

However, the former minister broke with the conservative leadership by describing Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip as “disproportionate”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary David Cameron have never used this term to describe Israel’s actions.

In 2006, when Cameron was opposition leader, he reportedly assured the Conservative Friends of Israel that his party would not use the word “disproportionate” in connection with Israel, after his then shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, did so.

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“It is clear that many thousands of residents have been killed or injured, many of them children,” Jones told MEE.

“There are certainly concerns about the way Israel continues its actions in Gaza. They are disproportionate and you see the horrific destruction that has been inflicted on Gaza.

“You see people starving, having to survive on animal feed, bird feed and grass. And the international community, which – let’s face it – instinctively tends to support Israel, is increasingly uncomfortable with what is happening,” he added.

In the House of Commons in recent months, Jones has repeatedly expressed his concerns about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel’s legal obligations under international law.

Jones told MEE he believes arms sales to Israel should be suspended, noting that “this would be a very symbolic action and would make no real difference to the functioning of the Israeli military.”

“We should do it, but people shouldn’t get too excited about it.”

At the beginning of April, he and numerous other Tories called for an end to arms sales to Israel.

The former cabinet minister also told MEE that he believed the government should pay “close attention” to the International Criminal Court (ICC), pointing out that its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is a “British lawyer” who would not take the decision to issue arrest warrants against several Hamas and Israel leaders “lightly”.

On May 21, David Cameron described Khan’s decision to seek arrest warrants against Israeli politicians as “simply wrong” and accused the chief prosecutor of drawing a “moral equivalence between the Hamas leadership and the democratically elected leader of Israel.”

Jones disagreed: “It’s not a political issue, it’s a question of justice.”

Labour market policy

Jones also criticized common statements about a two-state solution to the conflict: “To talk about a two-state solution when two states are not negotiating is a nonsensical concept.”

For this reason, Jones believes Britain should “work towards the recognition of a Palestinian state”. However, he warned that he believes such an outcome is only possible against the backdrop of “Hamas withdrawing and leaving the Palestinian Authority in power”.

“The Labour Party has repeatedly made clear that it supports the government’s position”

– David Jones, former Conservative minister

He further argued that a lasting ceasefire would only be possible if Hamas agreed to release its Israeli prisoners.

Jones also discussed his thoughts on British politics and the attitude towards Israel within his party.

Support for Israel among Conservatives, Jones told MEE, was “mainly because the Conservative friends of Israel have been so active in recruiting members, and I would have liked to see the Arab cause as actively promoted as the Israeli cause.”

About 80 percent of the party’s MPs are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel, a pro-Israel lobby group close to the Tory Party.

Jones, chairman of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, a cross-party lobby group with more than 100 MPs, said he had recently campaigned to “promote the Arab cause more actively in the Tory party”.

“I had links with a number of Arab countries and had more regular contact with them. We had reached a point where Arab ambassadors were attending Tory conferences and holding receptions. But the Arab cause has fallen behind,” he added.

Jones rejected the notion that the Conservative Party had a problem with Islamophobia in its ranks, as Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the party’s former leader, had claimed.

“I have not experienced Islamophobia in the Tory party,” Jones told MEE, “and if I had, I would have been in a good position to recognise it.”

When asked how he thought a Labour government led by Keir Starmer would have responded to Israel’s war on Gaza, Jones said he believed Labour would have handled the situation “exactly the same way” as Sunak’s Tory government.

He cited the British Foreign Office as one reason why change is so difficult to achieve, arguing that it “takes a long time for corporate policy to change”.

He also noted that “the Labour Party has repeatedly made clear in parliamentary debates throughout the war that it supports the Government’s position.”

“There have been some changes or nuances recently, but overall Labour has supported the government’s position.”