Study: UK Arms Exports to Israel Press Ahead Despite License Suspension

Date: 07 May 2025 - 22:01

News ID: ۱۳۹۲۹۰

LONDON (Dispatches) – A wide range of UK-made military goods and arms, including F-35 fighter jet parts, have continued to be sent to the Zionist regime even after the British government suspended 30 arms export licenses in September, Israeli import data revealed in a report on Wednesday suggests.
The report released by three campaign groups says parts for the jet, which has been critical for the Zionist regime’s war on Gaza, appear to have arrived in the Israeli-occupied territories as recently as March, five months after the UK said it had suspended its direct exports over concerns they might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Data from the Israeli Tax Authority cited by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine and Progressive International shows that 8,630 separate munitions have been sent from the UK to Israel since the suspensions.
The munitions fall under a category of import labeled “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and similar munitions of war and parts thereof”.
Most of the shipments cited in the report happened after the government’s arms suspension.
Soon after the suspensions, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told parliament that “much of what we send is defensive in nature. It is not what we describe routinely as arms”.
The report’s authors write: “On the basis of the evidence in this report, it appears that David Lammy has misled parliament and the public about arms shipments to Israel.”
The UK’s Department for Business and Trade did not respond to a request for comment.
A Foreign Office spokesperson told The Guardian: “This government has suspended relevant licenses for the [Zionist regime’s forces] that might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
In response to the study, nearly two dozen MPs have written to Lammy, calling on him to come before parliament to respond to the allegations.
“We urge the government to disclose the details of all arms exports to Israel since October 2023 and to immediately halt all arms exports to Israel,” they wrote.
“This could not be more urgent given the risk that British-made weapons could be used to enact Netanyahu’s plan to annex Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people.”
They said that the public “deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity”.
Former Labour shadow chancellor and MP John McDonnell and MP Zarah Sultana, who signed the letter, are also calling on the prime minister to launch an investigation into whether ministers misled parliament and the public and make it clear that if the ministerial code has been breached, they must resign.
“If parliament has been misled by the foreign secretary or any minister it is a resigning matter and more importantly it attracts potentially a charge of complicity in war crimes,” McDonnell said.
Sultana said the findings showed the government “has been lying to us about the arms it is supplying to Israel while it wages genocide in Gaza”.
“Far from ‘helmets and goggles’, the government has been sending thousands of arms and ammunition goods and [is] even still supplying components of the world’s most lethal fighter jets,” she said.