Nato divided over the UK arms licence suspension to Israel | F-35s EXPLAINED

this is the F-35 fighter jet which human rights organizations have called a Workhorse for Israel's brutal bombing campaign the UK government recently announced the suspension of 30 arms licenses out of 350 to Israel but this excluded the UK components of the multinational F35 program except we're going directly to Israel since 2015 the UK has provided hundreds of millions of pounds worth of military exports to Israel which includes components for military aircraft tanks ammunition and missiles having gathered information from a wide range of sources from NOS on the ground to Media reports to military incident logs the foreign secretary David Lamy says they've suspended certain licenses whe does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law so what does constitute a violation Waring parties must comply with the principle of Distinction they have to dis distinguish between civilians and combatants they have to distinguish between civilian targets and Military targets so that's one rule the second rule is that Waring parties must comply with the requirement of taking precautionary measures and last but not least there is the principle of proportionality so measures of any Waring Waring side must be proportionate could you elaborate on what concerns there are over how Israel's potentially violated International humanitarian law around 40,000 Palestinians have have been killed and it's reported that most of these casualties are civilians women and children in particular around 2 million civilians have been displaced and most of gazan residential houses including hospitals and humanitarian zones have been targeted and this um and in response to these concerns countries have been taking decisions um for example the Netherlands Belgium Italy Australia and others have suspended their arm supplies and techology supplies to Israel it's believed the UK provides around 15% of components for the f-35s do we know how Israel is currently using these jets for their war in Gaza um so there's not a great deal of information other than an acceptance that the F-35 is being used um which is understandable given the the size of the Israeli Air Force and the the specific intelligence capabilities that the aircraft um possesses um so I would expect that they would be flying in the main close air support missions for Israeli troops on the ground um so standing off um and and then Prosecuting targets that are being called in by uh Ford air controllers on the ground following the deadly Hamas attacks on the 7th of October last year the Palestinian Health authorities claimed that more than 40,000 people have been killed by Israeli ground and air campaigns human rights organizations have criticized the UK government for not including the f35s in their suspensions and some claim that Israel has been using these Jets to drop so soal Mega bombs in Gaza these bombs they potentially are lethal within 300 M radium they can produce a 12 M wide bomb crater and the UN has said in the past these bombs they can rupture lungs they can also rupture sinuses tear off limbs even 100 m from the blast site and they can also throw metal fragments a mile or more if they use the you know the bombasa issue the aircrafts are issue in a highly densely populated civilian area mostly populated by women and children young children um I think that raises very serious concerns of violations of intell humanitarian law and as I said earlier um some of the incident incidents reported um suggest that there is a credible concern that the violations of humanitarian serious violations of humanitarian law might have occurred um in the conflict involving the f35s however Israel has not disclosed the direct role of these jets in the war and it's also incredibly difficult to gather conclusive evidence in an active conflict so far the government hasn't released any documentation on the decision-making processes behind the f-35s however the foreign office did tell times radio that the F35 Pro program has a significant dependence on the UK and any suspension to Israel is not possible without undermining the program overrule which in turn would have a significant impact on International Peace and security as David Lamy said the global f30 flight supply chain that is vital for the security of the UK our allies and NATO so the F35 is the is the biggest um current aircraft uh program uh that exists within the West um the the primary uses are the United States so United States Air Force as I mentioned ear using the F35 a uh the United States Navy using the carrier variant the the 35c and the US Marine Corps uses both the the B the um vertical takeoff and the ca variant so they're by far the largest user of the aircraft but it's also used by a number of NATO uh Nations as well obviously the UK being one and a number of other countries around the world for example the Israelis and the Australians so the procurement um process for the F35 is is is quite well known um and the spares for the aircraft are managed through what's called a global spares pool um and each country um contributes um spare parts that it manufactures and also it it purchases the the the governments of of each of each aircraft purchase a certain number of spares which then go into that spares pool that pull can then be drawn upon by all of the users of the F35 um and the reason for doing that is to provide the most flexible um support solution to uh to any demand that comes up now in addition to that countries can and do maintain a specific spares pool of their own that that they have purchased so for example the spares that the UK deploys on its aircraft carriers um are probably spares that it is purchased and owns outright but the vast majority of spares come from the global spares pool so I'm not sure that it's accurate to say that the UK is providing spares directly to Israel as far as I'm aware the UK is providing spares into the global spares pool and Israel is able to draw on that Global spares pool in the same way as every other F35 user the foreign office also said we consider that the exceptional issues arising in relation to the F35 program relating to the maintenance of International Peace and security require the specific measures that the government announced yesterday