Afrasianet - Mark Smith, a diplomat and former political adviser to Britain's Foreign Office, said ministers and senior officials had backed arms deals that had contributed to death and terror in Gaza and elsewhere, and urged his former colleagues to tackle such deals.
Smith said in an article in the Guardian that he had spent his career working in the Middle East administration and serving the Arab world, and that as a key officer in arms sales policy he was responsible for assessing whether the British government's arms sales complied with legal and ethical standards under domestic and international law.
He pointed out that he resigned - as is known - in August 2024 due to the British government's refusal to stop arms sales to Israel despite its continuous bombardment ofGaza, noting that he made his decision after more than a year of internal pressure and reporting violations.
He denounced the British government's severe delay in suspending arms sales to Israel, as weeks after his resignation it was dragging its feet on making that decision while Israel continued to commit atrocities in Gaza and the United Kingdom stood idly by, unwilling.
"My time at the UK Foreign and Development Office has exposed how ministers can manipulate legal frameworks to protect 'friendly' countries from accountability, disrupting, distorting and obscuring official processes to create a façade of legitimacy, while allowing the most heinous crimes against humanity to be committed. Now, as the United States, one of our closest allies, proposes complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, what should we respond with?".
He described what he witnessed as "not just a moral failure, but behaviour that I believe has crossed the threshold of what is legal to complicity in war crimes," explaining that the British public deserves to know how such decisions are made behind closed doors.
"What I witnessed was not just a moral failure, it was behaviour that I believe crossed the threshold of what is legal to complicity in war crimes, and the British public deserves to know how such decisions are made behind closed doors."
As a key arms policy adviser, Smith says his role has been to gather information on the conduct of foreign governments involved in military campaigns, particularly in relation to civilian casualties and compliance with international humanitarian law, and that the information he gathered formed the basis for reports that led him to advise ministers on whether continued arms sales were legal.
During Israel's current military campaign in Gaza, marked by unprecedented destruction and deliberate targeting of civilian areas, Smith says his fears have grown.
But his questions to Britain's Foreign and Defence ministries about the legal basis for London's arms sales to Israel were met with hostility and rejection, he said, noting that he had received no response to the emails, but warned against expressing his concerns in writing, and lawyers and senior officials surrounded him with defensive instructions to "abide by the government's line" and delete correspondence.
It became clear, according to a writer, that no one was willing to address the fundamental question: How can ongoing arms sales to Israel be legal?
Smith responded by saying that the Foreign Office's handling of these cases is nothing less than a scandal, with officials forced to remain silent, operations manipulated to produce politically appropriate outcomes, whistleblowers being confronted, isolated and ignored, and at the same time the UK government continues to arm atrocity regimes and hide behind legal loopholes and public propaganda, according to Smith.
The former diplomat stressed that the UK's complicity in war crimes cannot continue, "and we must demand transparency and accountability in our arms export policies. Ministers must also be subject to the same legal and ethical standards to which they claim to adhere. Whistleblowers should be protected, not punished, for telling the truth."
"What is happening in Gaza is collective punishment, it is genocide. It's time to end the silence, don't allow ministers to trade human lives for political interests, it's time for accountability."
Smith described the current situation in Gaza as could not be worse, with Britain's closest ally proposing a mass expulsion of 2.1 million people from Gaza and "the demolition of one of the most densely populated civilian areas on earth, and that is ethnic cleansing."
Smith concluded by calling on his former colleagues "those who still believe in the values of integrity and justice to reject complicity" with this plan and not to believe reports that exonerate crimes against humanity, as what is happening "is not self-defense but collective punishment, it is genocide. It's time to end the silence, don't allow ministers to trade human lives for political interests, it's time for accountability," Smith said.
Source: The Guardian