{"id":310194,"date":"2025-06-11T07:24:42","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T07:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=310194"},"modified":"2025-06-12T06:24:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T06:24:20","slug":"why-the-uk-refuses-to-do-the-one-thing-that-could-stop-israels-intolerable-war-on-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=310194","title":{"rendered":"Why the UK refuses to do the one thing that could stop Israel’s ‘intolerable’ war on Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anna Stavrianakis \u2013 Middle East Eye May 29, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

What Israel<\/a> is doing in Gaza is \u201cmorally wrong and unjustifiable\u201d, its actions \u201cintolerable\u201d and \u201can affront to the values of the British people\u201d.<\/p>\n

These are not the words of a pro-Palestine<\/a> activist, but of the UK<\/a> foreign secretary, David Lammy<\/a>, who has now suspended negotiations on a new free trade agreement and vowed to review co-operation on the 2030 bilateral road map.<\/p>\n

But the UK government still won\u2019t take the single fastest and most effective step: ending military\u00a0cooperation with Israel and halting all arms sales.<\/p>\n

Lammy said in parliament that \u201carms are not getting to Israel that could be used in Gaza\u201d. This is false. The UK government last year suspended<\/a> a small number of arms export licences – around 10 percent – after determining that Israel is not committed to complying with international humanitarian law, but it allowed UK participation in the F-35 fighter jet programme to continue.<\/p>\n

In addition, new data from both Israel and the UK raises concerns about the scale and end use of UK-supplied weaponry.<\/p>\n

In its September 2024 decision to restrict certain arms sales, the government decided on the narrowest possible approach: it suspended licences for weapons with a direct use in Gaza, but it did not halt wider arms exports to Israel for use by the army – such as for training purposes or for\u00a0its illegal occupation<\/a> of the West Bank – or for Israeli industry use.<\/p>\n

Yet there is a much wider pattern of British military collaboration<\/a> with Israel and its illegal practices, beyond direct violence in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Even within the government\u2019s narrow position, there is a massive loophole.\u00a0The suspension does not cover components that go to the USA to be put into F35s to be sent to Israel. UK companies provide\u00a015 percent<\/a>\u00a0of every new F-35 fighter jet made.<\/p>\n

Neither does the suspension cover components that reach Israel via a global spare parts pool.\u00a0\u00a0The pool is coordinated by the US Department of Defense and arms companies Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney.<\/p>\n

Yet apparently there is no system in place<\/a> to track the movement of parts into and out of the pool – which the British government says makes it impossible for it to prevent UK-made parts from reaching Israel.<\/p>\n

Lack of political will<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This is hard to believe, to the point of absurdity. The world\u2019s largest military producer and massive arms companies, unable to track their supply chain? If faulty parts were found, you can bet they\u2019d want to pinpoint where they came from.<\/p>\n

Instead, this appears to be a question of political will: tracking parts to avoid them being used in a genocide simply isn\u2019t on the agenda.<\/p>\n

We know that Israel is using F-35s to bomb Gaza, assist ground troops and implement the blockade. The Israeli army has reportedly conducted more than 15,000 flight hours<\/a> and 8,000 missions over Gaza since 7 October 2023. This past March, Israel used F-35s<\/a> to break the ceasefire, killing more than 400 Palestinians in a single day.<\/p>\n

UK parts have been central to this killing spree. The UK government licence for the F-35 was used 14 times<\/a> more in 2023 than in any previous year.<\/p>\n

The UK government accepts that there is a clear risk<\/a> that F-35 components might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law. Nonetheless, the government asserts<\/a> in court documents that this is outweighed by the \u201cimmensely serious and imminent risks to international peace and security\u201d posed by a suspension of F-35 parts.<\/p>\n

What are these immensely serious and imminent risks?<\/p>\n

Apparently, they are too sensitive for the public to know. Court documents are heavily redacted, leaving only vague claims about damage to the credibility of Nato<\/a> war plans and a potential reduction of Nato air control in the event of prolonged disruption or conflict in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n

These ambiguous risks are apparently deemed to be more serious than genocide or other war crimes against Palestinians, and more imminent than the actually occurring, live-streamed devastation of Gaza<\/a>. Cloaked in the language of national security, and hidden behind the black pen of redactions, we are asked to take these claims at face value, despite what we know is happening in Gaza.<\/p>\n

In addition to the F-35 loophole, a new report<\/a> by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine and Progressive International – relying on data from the Israel Tax Authority – suggests that the UK might have continued directly shipping F-35 parts to Israel even after the suspension.<\/p>\n

MP Zarah Sultana<\/a> and 41 of her colleagues, along with a number of other groups, have demanded that Lammy respond to questions raised by the report.\u00a0The government did not respond to the letter, and was challenged<\/a> in Parliament about this failure.<\/p>\n

Contorted justifications<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Furthermore, the latest UK government licensing data shows that licences worth \u00a3127.6 million ($172m) were granted to Israel between October and December 2024, the months following the suspension. That\u2019s more licences than in 2020-23 combined<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The equipment licensed is mostly military radars, components, software and targeting equipment, prompting the parliamentary business and trade committee to ask government ministers for oral evidence<\/a> in an effort to understand how they can be certain this equipment isn\u2019t being used in Gaza.<\/p>\n

As all of this has been going on, the UK government has been in court<\/a> on a case brought by the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq and the Global Legal Action Network. They have spent the past year and a half fighting the government<\/a> over its arms export policy, and more recently over its decision to exempt F-35 parts from the licensing suspension.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s main strategy has been to claim<\/a> the court doesn\u2019t have jurisdiction to assess the case.\u00a0If the judges accept this, it will be a death knell for arms export control policy. If the courts cannot assess whether the government implemented its own legally binding policy properly, what is the point of having controls?<\/p>\n

The UK government\u2019s position is growing increasingly untenable, and seems more brittle by the day. Its suspension of trade talks with Israel is a paltry response to what it calls an intolerable situation.<\/p>\n

Just hours after Lammy\u2019s statement, another RAF surveillance plane<\/a> took off towards Gaza to provide intelligence to Israel; and days later, UK trade envoy \u00a0Lord Austin visited Israel<\/a> to, in his words<\/a>, \u201cdrum up business for Britain\u201d.<\/p>\n

The mismatch between government practice and Lammy\u2019s confected outrage speaks volumes.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the government is using counter-terrorism legislation to punish Palestine activists, prompting UN experts<\/a> to criticise its heavy handedness.<\/p>\n

Ongoing public and parliamentary opposition to Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza is forcing the government into ever-more contorted justifications to avoid the one thing that would materially force Israel to reconsider its practices: suspending all arms transfers to and from Israel, and halting all military cooperation.<\/p>\n

This would have a swift and concrete effect on Israel\u2019s ability to carry out its assault on Palestinians and its occupation of Palestinian land.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Anna Stavrianakis is professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, UK, and Director of Research and Strategy at Shadow World Investigations. Her research focuses on UK arms export policy, the international arms trade and arms transfer control, militarism and security.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sanctioning of Israeli Ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich is a token gesture to deflect criticism. If Starmer wanted to he could end the slaughter in Gaza overnight by clamping down on key arms exports. So why doesn\u2019t he? Have the Israelis got something on him? Remember, Starmer was brought in to counter “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":309149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=310194"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310201,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310194\/revisions\/310201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/309149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=310194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=310194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=310194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}