Senior UK Military Figures Made Secret Trips to Israel in 2024, Data Reveals

Date: 10 January 2025 - 23:00

News ID: ۱۳۵۶۶۸

LONDON (Dispatches) – Senior figures within the United Kingdom’s defense establishment have made numerous unpublicized and secret visits to the Israeli-occupied territories since October 7, 2023, British government data has revealed.
According to the outlet, Declassified UK, which cited the British government’s records of senior Ministry of Defense (MoD) officials’ business expenses, hospitality and meetings for the entirety of 2024, a number of those officials conducted at least five such secret visits to the occupied territories in the months following Hamas’s operation into Israel and Tel Aviv’s launching of its genocidal campaign on the Gaza Strip.
The trips reportedly include that of the UK’s Chief of the Defense Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, who had visited Israel on January 21, 2024 and met with his Israeli counterpart, Herzi Halevi “to discuss future operations in the region”.
General Charles Stickland, the Chief of Joint Operations at the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters – responsible “for the command and integration of UK global operations” – also visited the Israeli-occupied territories on March 18, 2024, under what the British government simply referred to in documents as “MoD Directed attendance at meetings to be held in Tel Aviv”. That same day, the MoD’s Director-General for Security Policy, Paul Wyatt, was also visiting Israel.
Other senior UK defense figures who have made the unpublicized trips to Israel include the head of the UK’s Strategic Command, James Hockenhull, who reportedly subtly visited Tel Aviv for a “UK-Israel bilateral” back on 28 December 2023.
The head of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Air Chief Marshal, Sir Richard Knighton, also made a visit on 9 January 2024 for undeclared purposes. Although the topic of that trip remains unspecified, the RAF’s operations in the Middle East have since dramatically increased, with the Air Force conducting hundreds of flights over the Gaza Strip to gather intelligence to share with Israeli Occupation forces.
According to a MoD spokesperson quoted by the outlet, the UK and its allies made efforts “to reach a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict in Gaza”, hence why “senior defense officials have visited Israel for routine diplomatic visits”. They claimed that the “Discussions included the UK calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the need for all parties to comply with international humanitarian law while recognizing Israel’s right to security.”