The European Union’s contracts of €59 million with Israeli military companies to supply war drones for the surveillance of asylum seekers at sea is immoral, of questionable legality and encourages human rights abuses in occupied Palestine, today said the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med).
The €59 million of the recent EU drone contracts reportedly went to two Israeli military companies: Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, IAI. Elbit’s Hermes 900 was experimented on the population of the besieged Gaza Strip in the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, Operation Protective Edge.
This shows EU investment in Israeli equipment whose value was demonstrated by its use in the course of oppressing the Palestinian people and occupying their territory, said Euro-Med in a statement. These drone purchases will be seen correctly as supporting and incentivizing such experimental use of military technology by the Israel’s repressive regime, it added.
“It is outrageous for the EU to buy drones from Israel drone manufacturers considering the repressive and unlawful ways that drones have been used to oppress Palestinians living under occupation for more than fifty years,” said Richard Falk, Euro-Med Monitor’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, “It is also unacceptable and inhumane for the EU to use drones, however obtained, to violate the basic rights of migrants risking their lives at sea to seek asylum in Europe.”
The EU should discourage human rights violations against Palestinians by refraining from purchasing Israeli military equipment used in the occupied Palestinian territories, said Euro-Med.
