UK firms have exported thousands of military items including munitions to Israel despite the governmentsuspending 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 toIsraelin 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 theLabourban 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.
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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.
Zarah Sultana, the MP for Coventry South, said: “This explosive report shows 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.” Labour has withdrawn the party whip from Sultana because she voted against benefit cuts.
The Foreign Office has been contacted for comment.