Labour MP says party will impose Israeli arms embargo if it wins this week

Speaking to a Muslim audience, Fabian Hamilton said the arms sales would stop “immediately.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A Labour parliamentarian told a Muslim audience last week that if the party wins the general elections on July 4, the new government will put an arms embargo on Israel “immediately.”

Fabian Hamilton, who represents part of Leeds, was on the campaign trail in a local mosque and gave this answer when he was asked if Great Britain should be selling arms to a country that was “committing genocide.”

“On the issue of arms sales, if we win the election next week we will stop arms sales to Israel immediately,” he said.

“We don’t supply a huge number of arms, but we will stop them because we’re complicit if we don’t,” continued the MP, who served briefly in 2016 as the Opposition party’s shadow foreign secretary.

“We’ve been very clear about” putting a halt to the weapons exports, he noted.

The Labour party immediately denied what Hamilton had claimed was its “clear” policy.

“Labour has been clear that the government must uphold both our domestic and international legal obligations when it comes to arms exports,” a party spokesperson told The Telegraph.

“We have not had access to the government’s legal advice and not called for a halt to arms sales,” he added. “If Labour wins the election, we will assess the most up-to-date legal advice.”

This response seemingly leaves open at least the possibility that a Labour-led government would be open to seizing a chance to deny Israel weapons if legal loopholes were found.

The current, Conservative government has sometimes threatened to ban weapons sales to Israel, but has made clear at other times that this would be an incorrect move to make.

The Jewish legislator explained to The Telegraph that he had stated the policy of David Lammy, the man who had taken the shadow foreign secretary role in 2021, thereby positioning him to become the next British foreign minister.

In April, Lammy said in a Sky News interview that Labour would only endorse a sales ban if given the legal advice that adherence to the arms deals could expose Britain to accusations that it was breaking international law by helping Israel.

Israel has been repeatedly accused of breaching international humanitarian law in its conduct of the war it declared against the Hamas terrorist organization after its men led an invasion of Gazan envelope communities on October 7, massacring 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and taking 252 hostage.

Jerusalem has firmly denied the charges, providing evidence such as the millions of phone calls made and messages sent to Palestinians, and the blanketing of Gazan neighborhoods with flyers ahead of military actions, sacrificing the element of surprise to first urge civilians to flee to safer areas.

The Labour party is projected to win an overwhelming victory in Thursday’s vote.

Polls currently show the left-wing Labour Party with a massive lead over the ruling Conservative Party, easily furnishing Opposition Leader and Labour Party Chairman Keir Starmer with the 326 seats in the House of Commons needed to form a government.

A recent poll by Survation/MRP found that if the July 4^th elections were held today, Labour would trounce the Tories with 42% of the vote to 25%, with the right-wing Reform and center-left Liberal Democrats tied for third at 11% each.

Projections based on the poll show Labour winning 470 seats to just 85 for the Conservatives, 56 for the Liberal Democrats, and 4 for Reform, a complete reversal of the stunning Tory victory in 2019, when the party won 365 seats.

In a survey some two weeks ago by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, 46% of British Jews said they intended to vote for Labour, versus 30% who preferred the incumbent Conservative Party. This is a huge bounce back since the historic low of 11% support Jews gave Labour in 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn led the party.

arms salesBritish electionsIsrael-UK relationsUK Labour Party