US Senate approves resolution to prevent arms sales to UAE

The US Senate voted against passing the arms deal to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, recently approved by the Donald Trump administration, against the background of the war in Yemen and the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

This came in a bipartisan move from the Republican and Democratic parties against the move adopted by the administration at the end of May.

53 to 45 voted in favor of the bill in three consecutive rounds, a clear expression of the bipartisan members’ anger at the move they saw as undermining the legislature’s authority to approve arms deals with foreign countries.

While the House of Representatives is also expected to vote against the deals, while the president is likely to resort to veto to pass deals to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Trump restored last May to a rare provision of arms control laws to circumvent Congress, allowing the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf.

While arms sales usually go through a 30-day review period by Congress, the provision allows for this to be bypassed in an emergency.

Opponents blame Riyadh and Abu Dhabi for their war on Yemen, which has caused tens of thousands of casualties, many of them civilians, according to humanitarian groups.

“When they target civilians how can we continue to sell those arms?” Said Democrat Robert Menendez before the vote.

Some lawmakers are also angry over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Many parliamentarians consider Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the killing. A UN spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the journalist had been killed and then cut off.

Britain has announced on Thursday the suspension of new arms contracts to the Saudi-UAE alliance for fear of using these weapons in Yemen, and several non-governmental organizations in France called on authorities to follow their British counterpart.

Two days ago, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) revealed in an extensive report that the number of deaths in the war in Yemen was 91600 people, since the Saudi-UAE alliance began its military operations on 25 March 2015, noting that the coalition alone is responsible for more than 8,000 deaths from about 1,700 deaths resulted from direct targeting of civilians.

According to a detailed report by the international organization, which specializes in armed conflict and is based in the United States, the year 2018 was the deadliest and the most violent in the war, where about 30 thousand people were killed, adding that the province of Taiz, the third largest city, has the lead in the most violent province in Yemen since 2015, with a death toll of 18419 people, including 2222 civilian deaths, largely due to the four-year siege imposed by Ansar Allah (Houthis.)

According to the report, the provinces of Hodeidah and Al Jouf come after Taiz, where nearly 10,000 deaths have been reported in each region since 2015.

For Hodeidah, which ranks second in the most deadly cities, the report said the number of reported deaths increased dramatically in 2018 due to the UAE-backed attack on the west coast.

As for civilian figures, the report indicates that in these provinces, more than 2,000 civilians (each governorate) were killed. The three governorates account for more than half of the reported civilian deaths in Yemen since 2015.

The report notes that, unlike the large number of deaths from armed clashes, civilians in 2019 are at less risk of being killed by political violence than they were in 2015, indicating that 2015 was the deadliest, because of The highly indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Yemen by air strikes of the Saudi-UAE alliance, where 4,668 civilians died that year, compared to 2426 civilians in 2018, although 2018 was the deadliest and most bloody in general.

The report points out that civil deaths due to collateral damage are not shown in this report. In addition, these figures do not include deaths from the cholera crisis or potential deaths associated with famine.

Overall, about 67% of all civilian deaths in Yemen since 2015, caused by direct targeting, resulted from air strikes carried out by the Saudi-UAE Alliance, making the Coalition the most responsible actor for killing civilians.

In this context, the report notes that since November and December 2018, there has been a reduction in the number of air strikes targeting civilians directly in Yemen, as explained by the “reduction in civilian deaths in Hodeidah because of the Stockholm Agreement after the International pressure on Saudi Arabia after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.”

The report says that “highlighting the harsh role played by the Kingdom in cutting Khashoggi has highlighted the role of Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni crisis. It is clear that the US Senate has put the Yemeni crisis in the lead.”