EU's Frontex is in denial about how Israel benefits from $192 million drone deal

Cruel to refugees, Frontex masquerades as a humanitarian organization. (Nicolas Landemard / Le Pictorium Agency via ZUMA Press)

Frontex, the European Union’s border guard agency, is in denial about its support for Israel’s weapons industry.

Last week I wrote about how that body had inked a new $192 million deal on using drones to surveil migrants.

While researching my article, I contacted Frontex alerting it to how Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) had stated it was a partner in that deal, along with Airbus. Frontex did not answer a question I raised then about the role played by IAI in the Gaza genocide.

Yet following publication of my article, I had a telephone conversation with a Frontex staff member, who sought to downplay the involvement of IAI in the new deal.

“We don’t have any legal contract with Israel Aerospace Industries, we are dealing with Airbus,” the staff member said.

The staff member nonetheless admitted that the deal involves the use of the Heron drone and “for sure, Israel is producing the Heron.”

“We are using the drone for saving lives,” the staff member added. “I don’t understand what is so bad about that.”

When I asked if the staff member had been watching the news for the past 15 months and was aware that a genocide had been carried out in Gaza, the response left me gobsmacked. “The conflict between Israel and Palestine is not our business,” the staff member said.

The claims by this staff member need to be unpacked.

Disingenuous

Firstly, Frontex is being disingenuous in seeking to distance itself from Israel’s war industry.

While Airbus is the lead participant, the terms of the deal make clear that it involves subcontracting.

As soon as the deal had been formalized in December, Israel Aerospace Industries announced that it was “proud” to be the subcontractor for the deal.

Frontex should have been and probably was aware of IAI’s involvement before the deal’s conclusion.

As IAI is owned by the Israeli state and has boasted of being “thoroughly embedded” with Israeli military forces during the war against Gaza, the firm is directly implicated in genocide. Even worse, IAI has milked the opportunities afforded by the Gaza genocide, reporting its highest-ever profits near the end of 2024.

Governments and governmental agencies around the world are legally obligated not to abet genocide in any way. By approving a contract benefiting an Israeli weapons maker, Frontex is violating the Genocide Convention, a core instrument of international law.

Weapon of genocide

Next, we come to the argument that Frontex is using an Israeli drone “for saving lives.”

Frontex is not a humanitarian organization, although it masquerades as such.

More than a decade later, the agency remains closely associated with an October 2013 disaster, in which hundreds of migrants drowned off Lampedusa, an Italian island. Frontex, which spotted the vessel carrying the migrants many hours before the shipwreck occurred, has been accused of failing to take sufficient action despite clear signals that passengers onboard that vessel were at risk.

Nor has the reputation of Frontex improved since Fabrice Leggeri resigned as its director in 2022 after it was revealed that the agency was taking part in the illegal pushbacks of refugees. Leggeri is now a lawmaker with France’s extreme right National Rally.

Frontex has been using a Heron drone through a previous contract for at least four years. With that drone the agency has surveilled migrants forced back to Libya, thereby imperiling their basic rights.

Given that ignoble record, it is hard to accept the inference by the Frontex staff member that the Heron is now primarily a tool for saving lives.

Far from being a rescue plane, the Heron has been a weapon of genocide in Gaza. No amount of spin can erase that fact.

Finally, let us consider the comment by the Frontex staff member that “the conflict between Israel and Palestine is not our business.”

Leaving aside the important matter that the word “conflict” is a misnomer for a situation characterized by settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and extermination, Frontex does indeed keep an eye on events in Palestine and its environs.

Frontex has previously, noted that Israel has expressed an interest in developing a “strategic peer-to-peer partnership” with the agency and has held exploratory discussions with that state’s authorities about potential cooperation.

Israel, for its part, has been following meticulously the work of Frontex. I learned via a freedom of information request that in 2022, an Israeli diplomat even emailed Frontex, to inquire about a little-known database on visa-exempt visitors to the European Union, which is being set up.

The interest shown by Israel in that database is unlikely to be innocuous. As Israel is a world leader in spyware, all of its activities in the cyber domain should be viewed with suspicion.

The staff members at Frontex may think that the situation in Palestine is none of their business. Yet if they are flying a Heron drone over the Mediterranean, they are boosting Israel’s weapons industry and conniving in the genocide from which that industry has gained.