{"id":54194,"date":"2023-12-14T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.declassifieduk.org\/?p=54194"},"modified":"2024-05-16T16:11:19","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T15:11:19","slug":"how-one-british-business-could-stop-israeli-jets-bombing-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.declassifieduk.org\/how-one-british-business-could-stop-israeli-jets-bombing-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"How One British Business Could Stop Israeli Jets Bombing Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ten miles away from Heathrow airport, slotted between a golf club and the M25, lies a family business that\u2019s been running for almost a century. In many ways, Martin-Baker is a British engineering success story, making \u00a372m profit last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its speciality, ejection seats, can be found in the cockpits of most Western fighter jets, serviced by a thousand staff at sites across the world. \u201cThe sun never sets on Martin-Baker,\u201d its website muses, in a nod to the former British Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside the company’s HQ in Buckinghamshire, an electronic screen keeps a tally of how many pilots have safely ejected from its seats. \u201cLives saved to date: 7715\u201d, it boasts. Yet less well publicised is how many lives the company is likely to have endangered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That question is particularly poignant now, because the company supplies seats to Israel\u2019s air force, which is pummeling Gaza with genocidal intensity. Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy, who studied at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, says the air force has hit more than 22,000<\/a> targets in the narrow coastal strip \u2013 exceeding the number America used in an entire year of operations in Afghanistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 10,000 children have died in Israel\u2019s bombardment, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a rate without precedent in modern warfare. The frequency of such sorties means the aircraft involved are guzzling through inventories of spare parts, as engineers race to service the jets that are more complex than F1 cars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jewel in the crown of Israel\u2019s air force are several dozen state-of-the-art F-35s, made by US arms giant Lockheed Martin and a myriad of subcontractors. Crucial to their continued operation will be the ejection seats with their explosive cartridges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Martin-Baker\u2019s stand at an arms fair in London. (Photo: Phil Miller \/ DCUK)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Pentagon, which hugely subsidises Israel\u2019s military, handed Martin-Baker a contract<\/a> to provide these cartridges last September, of which around half a million dollars was to cover work with Israel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a safety feature has proved surprisingly temperamental, and had war broken out last summer these planes might have missed out. Its squadron was grounded<\/a> for a week in August 2022 due to a problem with the ejection cartridges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fault, which was first found in the US, centred on Martin-Baker\u2019s part of the plane. The firm said the error was \u201ctraced back to a gap in the manufacturing process, which was addressed and changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the incident was swiftly resolved<\/a>, it highlighted the fragility of the plane\u2019s supply chain, which involves at least 79 companies in Britain, who between them ensure<\/a> \u201c15 percent of the value of every F-35 is made in the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin-Baker has at least one engineer based around Nevatim air base, where Israel stations its F-35s and the UK military has sent a cargo flight in recent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other manufacturers are scattered across the US and Europe, providing activists and lawyers in different jurisdictions with potential avenues to halt supplies reaching Israel. The Dutch affiliate of Oxfam has filed a lawsuit in the Netherlands, where NATO has an F-35 regional supply hub, in a bid to stop spare parts bound for Tel Aviv. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The UK companies arming – and the people resisting –...<\/h2><\/a>\n READ MORE <\/i><\/a>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Success could hinge on whether Dutch officials can prove the arms exports will not fuel war crimes in Gaza. A similar dilemma faced British authorities two decades ago, when the UK implemented an embargo on key components<\/a> for Israel\u2019s military. It included parts for ejection seats on Israel\u2019s 140 F-4 Phantom<\/a> jets, which were only available from Martin Baker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A repeat of such a principled stance seems unlikely from Rishi Sunak\u2019s government, which has pledged unequivocal support for Israel. Defence secretary Grant Shapps would probably want to be even more deeply involved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told parliament<\/a> last week: \u201cWe have provided no offensive military weapons to Israel during this conflict, and in fact our exports to Israel on military grounds are actually quite low, I think a figure of something like \u00a348 million last year, which is not a very significant amount of money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain would, he said, \u201conly be providing defensive materials, or materials which might help with the recovery of hostages,\u201d during the conflict in Gaza. As Shapps views the airstrikes on Hamas as Israeli self-defence \u2013 however many civilians are hit \u2013 then components for the F-35 are likely to keep flowing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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