The ELSC is taking legal action to stop drone exports to genocidal Israel

The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) has pursued legal action in an attempt to halt the scheduled transfer of Skylark drone parts from Germany to Israel this coming week.

According to open-source intelligence and export documentation, the flight is expected to carry components of Skylark, a miniature unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), manufactured by Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s main military suppliers.

The plane shipment will be arriving from Budapest and is then due to travel from Frankfurt on an El Al passenger flight to Tel Aviv on Tuesday June 10.

German authorities urged to prevent plane carrying Skylark drone parts from flying to Israel

The ELSC, acting on behalf of a Palestinian plaintiff from Gaza, has filed two emergency motions with the Administration Courts of Frankfurt and Berlin last Friday, to urge German authorities to block the transit of these drone components through Frankfurt Airport.

Partner lawyer with the ELSC Ahmed Abed said his client has lost more than 60 family members, including his father and sister whom he had to leave bleeding with serious head wounds, to rescue the rest of his family from bombing. The two of them could not be saved, and both died. Five more of his siblings all under the age of 18 were also killed.

Released data by the German Ministry for Economic Affairs reveals Germany has exported weapons to Israel worth more than €485 million between October 2023 and May 2025. Germany is the second largest exporter of arms to Israel, amounting to 30% of Israel’s arms, following the U.S. at 69%.

This is a continuation in Germany’s pattern of allowing transit of weapon parts to Israel as reported over the past year, by Irish publication The Ditch, which found Lufthansa, Germany’s national airline, to be heavily involved in the transportation of weapons to the IDF through Irish airspace.

ELSC: “one day accountability will come”

A ELSC spokesperson told the Canary:

We are discussing arms deliveries that persisted even after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s assault on Gaza constitutes a plausible case of genocide. These deliveries continued long after numerous UN bodies and international human rights organizations—entities that Europe and Germany routinely rely on in other contexts—raised numerous alarms.

Germany knowingly and willfully continued to supply weapons to Israel in violation of international law. Beyond providing military support, it has publicly defended and justified Israel’s crimes, systematically silenced critics of its complicity, and remained in blatant denial of the atrocities broadcast to the world in real time.

This is complicity with full awareness. And one day, accountability will come.

In addition to the ICJ ruling, in June 2024 UN experts called on states and arms manufacturers supplying weapons, parts, and ammunition to Israeli forces, to end their arms transfers to Israel, or risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws, and possibly genocide.

Since then, leading Palestinian and international human rights organisations, the world’s top genocide scholars, and Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation in Palestine, have all reached the same conclusion – Israel is committing a genocide.

By filing this urgent motion, ELSC is looking to prevent further irreparable harm to civilians in Gaza and to hold the German state accountable for its legal obligations under international humanitarian and criminal law and The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

It’s time to hold politicians and weapon companies to account

Lawyer Ahmed Abed told us that:

Words of sorrow by the German government are worthless for the Palestinians in Gaza as long as it lets arms be used to kill them. It is time to bring accountability against the politicians and manufacturers who support the weapon export for the genocide.

The Skylark drones are being used by the Israeli military to identify and surveil targets in Gaza, relaying real-time coordinates for artillery strikes. These strikes have resulted in the large-scale killing of civilians and the destruction of critical infrastructure.

On Elbit’s website, Skylark is described as a ‘battle-proven, high­ performance’ system, which has been delivered to over 30 different users worldwide, and has ‘outstanding capabilities based on operational experience gained through tens of thousands of operational sorties by the IDF and various NATO and other international users’.

The drone was first used in large quantities during Operation Protective Edge, in which Israel killed more than 2200 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 500 children, in the Summer of 2014.

El-Al is Israel’s national airline, and although privately owned, is known for its close relationship with the Israeli government, regarding security and for performing military operations, with the airline not only handling civilian air travel but also supporting national security initiatives, including logistics for the military.

Featured image via the Canary