Is an Israeli air defense system shooting down Israeli drones in Libya?

While there is an arms embargo on the war-torn country, reports say UAE supplied an Israeli system to the Libyan warlord.

The United Arab Emirates has reportedly supplied an Israeli air defense system to Libya’s strongman General Khalifa Haftar to counter Turkish drones supplied to his rival as fighting to capture the capital of Tripoli intensifies.

According to a report in The New Arab, the system was supplied to counter Turkish drones as fighting around the capital of Tripoli picked up steam in recent days in an attempt to defeat the Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Fayez Sarraj.

The report alleges that the defense system was produced by an Israeli defense company and transferred it to Egypt where fighters loyal to the warlord were trained on it before it was moved to Libya.

While it is unclear who had trained the Libyans, there have been multiple reports of Israelis training Haftar’s forces in street warfare in territory under his control during August and September.

Though the United Nations Security Council has repeatedly renewed the arms embargo on Libya since 2011, both sides have received significant military aid by numerous countries.

Haftar who sits in Tobruk in eastern Libya has been heavily backed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, France and Russia since 2014.

Russia and the UAE have been heavily supporting Haftar’s forces with various weapons systems, including a Pantsir air defense system which was destroyed by the GNA in November, MiG-21 fighter aircraft and Mi-24/35P helicopter gunships as well as armored vehicles.

The Tripoli-based GNA led by Sarraj is supported by Italy, Qatar and Turkey which has sent troops as well as Turkish-backed Syrian rebels to fight in the war-torn country.

While Israel and Libya have no relations, in December Abd al-Hadi al-Hajj, foreign minister to Haftar’s interim government told The Jerusalem’s Post sister publication Maariv that he hopes Libya could establish normal relations with Israel if the Palestinian problem was resolved.

“We support the rights of the people, including all of the rights of the Palestinian people. But we support regional peace, oppose terrorism, and fight it in Libya as well,” he told the publication while in Paris.

Last week a Harop loitering drone produced by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in Azerbaijan and exported to Turkey to be used by Ankara’s military crashed near the town of Dirj.  The Harop is a small drone which according to the company’s website is a combination of the “capabilities of a UAV and a lethal missile.”

In July two Israeli-made Orbiter-3 tactical drones were also shot down in Libya by troops allied with Haftar. The two drones manufactured by Aeronautics produced in Azerbaijan which were part of a three-unit donation by Turkey, were recovered by troops some 40km southwest of the Libyan capital of Tripoli in the small town of al-‘Aziziya while the other was recovered in the Sidra district home to the war-torn country’s largest oil depot.

Aeronautics, which had it’s export license reinstated in February after a two-year suspension, denied knowing anything about the incident in Libya.