An Indian firm, Maryan Apparel, is halting a longstanding contract to make uniforms for the Israeli police, telling AFP on Friday that it had made a “moral decision” in light of the battle in Gaza.
In the southern state of Kerala, Maryan Apparel said that it had delivered about 100,000 uniforms to Israel’s police force every year since 2015.
“It is a moral decision,” the firm’s managing director Thomas Olickal told AFP.
In a Wednesday statement, Olickal said that a strike on a hospital and the “loss of thousands of innocent lives” in the conflict had prompted the decision.
Israelis and Palestinians have traded accountability for Tuesday’s deadly strike on the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
International leaders have condemned the strike and protests have erupted across the Muslim world with stark disagreement over the toll and who is responsible.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas blamed Israel for striking the hospital during its tremendous bombing campaign, and the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has put the death toll at 471, though that number is contested.
The Israeli military has accused a misfired rocket on another group, Islamic Jihad — a version of events supported by the United States, whose intelligence community has estimated between 100 and 300 people were killed.
According to Israeli officials, Hamas stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7 and killed at least 1,400 people, mainly civilians who were shot on the first day of the raid.
About 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed in clashes before its army regained control of the area under attack, Israel says.
More than 3,785 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed across Gaza in persistent Israeli bombardments in retaliation for the invasions by Hamas, according to the latest toll from its health ministry in Gaza.
Olickal told AFP his company will fulfill its existing commitments to Israel, which end in December but will not take new orders.
Olickal added, “We are okay resuming business with them after peace is restored.”
The firm has also delivered uniforms to the Philippine Army and government officials in Saudi Arabia.
