A Resigning Matter

Patrick Wintour writes:

UK firms have exported thousands of military items including munitions to Israel despite the government suspending key arms export licences to the country in September, new analysis of trade data shows.

The research also raises questions over whether the UK continued to sell F-35 parts directly to Israel in breach of an undertaking only to sell them to the US manufacturers Lockheed Martin as a way of ensuring the fighter jet’s global supply chain was not disrupted, something the government said was essential for national security and Nato.

The findings have led the former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell to call for a full investigation, adding it was a resigning matter if the foreign secretary, David Lammy, was shown to have misled parliament in breach of the ministerial code when he told MPs in September that much of what the UK sends to Israel was “defensive in nature”.

McDonnell said “The government has shrouded its arms supplies to Israel in secrecy. They must finally come clean in response to this extremely concerning evidence and halt all British arms exports to Israel to ensure no British-made weapons are used in Netanyahu’s new and terrifying plans to annex the Gaza Strip and ethnically cleanse the land.”

The research – conducted jointly by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Progressive International and Workers for a Free Palestine – uses Israeli tax authority import data to try to uncover what the continuance of the 200 arms export licences has allowed Israel to import. It covers the first seven months of the Labour ban to March.

In September, the Labour government suspended 29 arms export licences for offensive use in Gaza, leaving 200 arms licences in place. It also gave a carve-out for equipment used in the F-35 programme, saying national security required that the F-35 supply chain remained intact.

The suspensions were due to a clear risk that Israel might use the arms to commit serious breaches of international humanitarian law. Ministers have repeatedly assured MPs that the arms export licences remaining in place did not cover goods for use by the Israeli military in the conflict with Hamas.

Lammy, for instance, told parliament in September the continuing licences covered items such as “goggles and helmets for use by one of the UK’s closest allies”.

The Foreign Office has not published details of what the continuing licences covered.

But the new research raises questions over whether that distinction between supplying equipment for Israel’s offensive and defensive purposes is, or ever was, valid, especially if, as it appears, it provided a loophole for sales of munitions to Israel. The UK has no means of checking how the munitions it exports are used by the Israel Defense Forces.

This latest research indicates that 14 shipments of military items have been sent from the UK to Israel since October 2023, including 13 by air to Ben Gurion airport and one maritime delivery to Haifa that alone contained 160,000 items.

Since September 2024, 8,630 items were exported under the category “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and similar munitions of war and parts thereof – other”.

In addition to weapons, four shipments were made after September of 146 items under a customs code identified as “tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, motorised, whether or not fitted with weapons, and parts of such vehicles”.

Most of the shipments, valued in total at just over £500,000, occurred after the UK government suspended the arms export licences in September.

The Israeli data provides a code number identifying the type of export, details on country of origin, the value of the items, the month shipped and whether transported by land or sea. Neither the supplier or customer is listed.

On the commitment not to sell F-35 components to Israel directly, the report finds that the monthly pattern of UK shipments of aircraft parts to Israel is largely unchanged since September, but the data does not reveal if they are military parts.

And Dania Akkad writes:

A wide range of UK-made military goods and arms, including F-35 fighter jet parts, have continued to be sent to Israel even after the British government suspended 30 arms export licences 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 Israel's war on Gaza, appear to have arrived in Israel 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 labelled "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 licences for the [Israeli Defence Forces] that might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.

"Of the remaining licences for Israel, the vast majority are not for the Israeli Defence Forces but are for civilian purposes or re-export, and therefore are not used in the war in Gaza.

"The only exemption is the F-35 programme due to its strategic role in Nato and wider implications for international peace and security. Any suggestion that the UK is licensing other weapons for use by Israel in the war in Gaza is misleading.

"The UK totally opposes an expansion of Israel's military operations in Gaza. We urge all parties to return urgently to talks, implement the ceasefire agreement in full, secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas, and work towards a permanent peace."

Calls for investigation

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.

The report's release comes a week before the government is set to return to the High Court to face a legal challenge, brought by Palestinian rights group Al-Haq and the Global Legal Action Network, to its arms exports to Israel.

Over a year into the judicial review, the case has most recently focused on the government's decision to continue sending UK-made F-35 parts to Israel through third countries.

Emily Apple, media coordinator for the UK-based Campaign Against Arms Trade, which has been supporting the judicial review, said the report had shattered the claim, made by successive governments, that the UK arms export regime is robust and transparent.

"Our arms export regime is not fit for purpose and this government is complicit in Israel’s horrific war crimes. Time and again it has either refused to act or manufactured loopholes to prioritise arms trade profits over Palestinian lives. This has to stop," Apple said.

"And if this government refuses to stop, it is down to all of us to take action to end the UK’s role in Israel’s genocide."