Keir Starmer’s government has continued to approve arms exports to Israel even after some licences were suspended in September, it can be revealed.
31 “standard” and three “open” licences for military goods have been issued to Israel since 2 September, when UK foreign secretary David Lammy announced partial restrictions on arms sales to Israel.
Those items included “components for trainer aircraft” and “commercial aircraft” which were “not assessed to be used in relation to current military operations in Gaza”.
However, training aircraft can still be used to instruct Israeli pilots on how to conduct offensive operations in Gaza.
35 “standard” and six “open” licences were also approved for items classed as “non-military” such as telecommunications equipment and imaging cameras.
The UK government refused to issue a further 18 licences to Israel for “components for combat aircraft and naval vessels, as well as components for targeting and radar equipment”.
The information is contained in new data released this week on an “ad hoc” basis by Britain’s trade department in response to “significant parliamentary and public interest” in the issue.
The data was evaluated at parliament’s trade committee on Tuesday, during which ministers admitted that the UK government has still not determined whether Israel’s bombing of Gaza amounts to a violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
The committee was told that the UK government has not updated its assessment on Israel’s compliance with IHL since 31 July, some four and a half months ago. Previous assessments have taken less than half that time to finalise.
One minister further confirmed that there was “no appetite” for stopping the export of F-35 fighter jet components for use by Israel, despite concerns that this breaches Britain’s legal obligations.
It comes days after Amnesty International accused Israel of committing a genocide in Gaza and warned the UK to “immediately suspend the direct and indirect supply, sale or transfer, to Israel of all weapons” in order to “stop fuelling violations of international law”.
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Israel’s compliance with IHL
Chaired by Labour MP Liam Byrne, the committee heard from trade minister Douglas Alexander, foreign minister Stephen Doughty, defence minister Lord Coaker and civil servants Kate Joseph and Stephen Lillie.
The ministers confirmed that the UK government’s earlier judgment on Israel’s non-compliance with IHL centred on the mistreatment of detainees and restrictions of aid to Gaza.
However, they emphasised that a conclusion had still not been reached on whether Israel’s air strikes in Gaza amounted to a violation of IHL.
This was despite officials being reminded that Israeli forces have dropped 2,000lb bombs on densely-populated residential areas, rendered a large part of Gaza uninhabitable, and killed tens of thousands of civilians.
Speaking for the Foreign Office, Doughty declared: “Obviously we have to apply the evidential tests on these things very very carefully, and obviously there are questions around establishing the exact evidence around say proportionality or intent of an individual strike”.
Last month, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for the crimes of “murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.
However, the UK government has not updated its assessment of Israel’s compliance with IHL since late July. A further review is ostensibly due for release soon, but ministers did not explain why the most recent update has taken so long.
Watch the committee quiz Labour minister
RAF spy flights
The committee also sought to obtain information on the role of RAF spy flights over Gaza since December 2023, and whether surveillance footage was being used to inform the government’s assessment of Israel’s compliance with IHL.
Declassified previously revealed that the RAF has flown hundreds of spy missions over Gaza in support of Israel. Those planes can gather information for “target acquisition”, and intelligence received from Israel ahead of the missions may have been obtained under torture.
Ministers were probed on how it was possible to “see the day-by-day destruction” of Gaza with “more than 50,000 buildings destroyed”, as seen by the RAF spy planes, and not conclude that Israel’s conduct is disproportionate.
Lord Coaker claimed that surveillance footage “is purely and simply used in terms of hostage [rescue] and seeing whether we can locate the hostages”.
None of the RAF sorties have resulted in the successful release of any British hostages in Gaza. There is only one surviving UK hostage in the strip, Emily Damari, who is a 28-year-old dual national and the cousin of Lord Levy.
The Foreign Office further admitted that it has not requested surveillance footage from the Ministry of Defence in order to inform its assessment of Israel’s compliance with IHL.
Stephen Lillie, the Foreign Office’s director for defence and international security, told the committee: “To the best of my knowledge we have not asked for that information from RAF flights”.
In addition, the Foreign Office acknowledged that it had reviewed 413 potential violations of IHL by Israel in Gaza. However, it found that IHL had been breached in only two cases, meaning 99.5% of all incidents were found to be inconclusive.
‘Intriguing mystery’
Another key issue was the “carve-out” in Britain’s arms export licensing which allows F-35 fighter jet components to continue to be sent to Israel via third countries. Byrne described this exemption as an “intriguing mystery”.
Over 15% of every F-35 – Israel’s most advanced fighter jet – is made in the UK as part of a consortium led by US arms giant Lockheed Martin.
Declassified and The Ditch revealed last week that over 500 shipments of F-35 parts have been sent from Britain to the US since October 2023. Those components could then be onward exported to Israel and used to commit war crimes in Gaza.
The decision to keep sending F-35 components to global pools of spare parts has been the subject of a court challenge by Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq.
On 25 November, those organisations wrote to the UK government to confirm their intention to file an emergency injunction over the decision to exempt F-35 parts from arms suspensions.
In spite of this, Coaker informed the committee that there was “no particular appetite” for suspending the export of F-35 components to countries which supply the Israeli air force. He also said that the UK government was not conducting a review into this specific issue.
To this end, Coaker was asked whether the UK government’s obligations to US arms giant Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor in the F-35 programme, superseded its own obligations to IHL.
“Nobody can fail to be moved by the horrific pictures we see on our televisions screens”, Coaker said.
“What we’re saying as the Ministry of Defence is…, alongside that horror, we also have to consider… the programme that the F-35 is part of… delivers peace and security in many parts of the world and defends our freedom”, he added.
Coaker did concede that the US government is able to track whether F-35 parts made in Britain end up in Israel. However, the UK government “has no ability to influence where they go”, one official noted.
“The only place where you can stop parts from entering the [F-35] programme is at the UK border”, Coaker added. “Once they go out they’re not our property”, but that of the US Department of Defense.
Ministers struggled to clarify how this is consistent with the UK government’s obligations under the UN Arms Trade Treaty, which states that arms must not be exported to a country when they could be used to “commit or facilitate a serious violation of IHL”.
Following the committee hearing, Byrne wrote to Alexander and Doughty to express his concerns about “the rationale for permitting exports of F-35 components in apparent conflict with UK obligations under the UN Arms Trade Treaty”.
He noted how “it is not clear to me or most members of the Committee that the UK is honouring its international treaty obligations in the matter of F-35 exports. There are, bluntly, significant questions in our minds, and I would be grateful therefore, for the fullest of explanations”.
