While there is currently a highly questionable US-brokered ceasefire in place in Gaza, with increasing frequency its terms are being broken and people are continuing to be targeted, killed, maimed, traumatised and denied full access to the vital resources desperately needed to live by the state of Israel and its supporters.
This article examines the UK government’s ‘potential’ complicity in the ongoing supply of military materiel to the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) for use in its continued annihilation of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the occupied territories, as well as its attacks on Lebanon and Syria. (I use the word ‘potential’ because with every passing day there is an ever-increasing need to have proven what many have been demonstrating about.)
Accidental killing of aid workers
One particular incident, like so many others, begs more questions than it answers.
In April 2024, seven international aid workers, working with World Central Kitchen (WCK), were killed by missiles fired from an Israeli drone. Declassified UK, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Middle East Eye, along with Amnesty International, all reported similar concerns that the engine in this drone was supplied under an export licence granted by the UK government.
The Australian government initiated an immediate and in-depth enquiry into the tragic circumstances surrounding the accidental killing of the WCK international aid workers, ultimately concluding that it had not been deliberate, while also recommending that Israel issue an apology to the victims’ families. The UK government does not appear to have responded directly to that report to date. In April 2025, the family of a British aid worker killed by an Israeli drone strike in Gaza accused the government of giving “nothing but empty apologies”.
To put the death of aid workers into a regional context, the reader can refer to the various reports and data provided by the Aid Worker Security Database. Between March 2002 and 16 November 2025 a total of 835 Aid Workers have been killed in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.
Calls to suspend military exports
Following the tragic WCK incident there were immediate calls in the UK to suspend military export licences to Israel. It took months of indecision and procrastination, not helped by the change in government, during which time the flow of arms to Israel continued.
As can be deduced from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ casualty and fatality figures, between April and the end of July 2024 6,600 people were killed and 15,775 injured. These lives were taken during a period when the UK government took no action to suspend arms export licences to Israel. Little, if any, serious scrutiny has been applied as to whether any of the civilians, including the hundreds of children, who were maimed and killed during this time were armed members of Hamas or innocent Palestinian citizens.
Israel is a party to the 1949 Geneva Convention and yet throughout this and historical conflicts it has acted with impunity with the unquestioning support of its western allies. The long-suffering and oft-ignored United Nations continues to gather credible evidence that international humanitarian law has been violated on numerous occasions in the current conflicts as well as historically.
The UK government, headed by former human rights lawyer Sir Keir Starmer, continues to issue export licenses for military equipment to Israel. One might ask, who is defending the human rights of the people of Gaza?
Does too little action taken too late add up to complicity?
On 2 September 2024 the new UK government finally announced that it was suspending “around 30 arms export licences to Israel”. Out of a total of “approximately 350”.
What is glaring is the casual use of the words ‘around’ and ‘approximately’. Is that 28, 29 or 30; or 347, 354 licenses? This could be the difference between a military camera, military electronic equipment, or a firing mechanism. Why the delay and why the imprecision?
The UK government therefore left many more arms export licences in place than it suspended: approximately 320 licences remained in place.
The press release stated:
“The list of suspended items includes important components which go into military aircraft, including fighter aircraft, helicopters and drones as well as items which facilitate ground targeting, that would be used in Gaza.
UK components for the multi-national F-35 joint strike fighter programme will be excluded from this decision, except where going directly to Israel.
Any suspension of those pooled parts is not possible without having a significant effect on the global F-35 fleet with serious implications for international peace and security.”
As at 31 July 2025, the UK government stated that there were 167 licences for the export of military materiel to Israel. The detail is provided in the link, under Table 1 commentary.
The so-called ‘transparency data’ provided by the UK government is far from being transparent. It simply provides information about the number and types of licence. Were this data to be transparent, it could easily be provided under a range of generic terms, such as for example, aircraft, target acquisition, weapon control, munitions, ammunition, and so on.
Israel export control licensing data: 6 December 2024, updated 28 August 2025
Questions asked of ministers
Tom Morrison, Lib-Dem MP for Cheadle asked for clarification about the export licences granted to UAV Tactical Systems Ltd – the UK-based supplier of drone components suspected of having been used in the tragic killing of the WCK aid workers. It has not been possible to identify any public statement in response from UAV Tactical Systems Ltd.
Douglas Alexander, who has in the past been a guest of a group lobbying for Israel, gave the following reply:
“From 1 October 2023 to 31 December 2024, the latest date covered by our most official statistics release, UAV Tactical Systems LTD have been issued 2 export licences covering exports to Israel.
“Each licence has been assessed to ensure that the items were not for use by the Israeli military in military operations in Gaza, pursuant to the decision on 2 September 2024 to suspend exports of equipment to Israel that might be used by the Israeli military in operations in Gaza.
“Licences for military equipment which is not for use in operations in Gaza or which relate to components for products which are ultimately for re-export to other countries were not included in the scope of the suspension.”
Freedom of information request
I submitted the following Freedom of Information (FOI) request on 30 August 2025 to the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), seeking a clearer answer to Tom Morrison’s question:
“This FOI request seeks to have the specifics of that question answered:
(a) hardware,
(b) software and
(c) technical support to Israel since October 2023.
If the export licences did not cover either a, b or c, what did they cover?”
The date of the initial DBT response slipped from 29 September 2025 to 27 October 2025 and reads:
“The Annex contains information relating to export licensing decisions from 1 October 2023 up to 31 December 2024, the date range that was requested in the original Parliamentary Question (PQ). We have interpreted your request as asking for the Annual Report Summary goods descriptions. The Annex contains two export licences rather than the three referenced in the PQ, as DBT has noted that an additional licence that was not in scope of the PQ was inadvertently included. The PQ response should have stated that UAV Tactical Systems had been issued two export licences to Israel in the period 1 October 2023 to 31 December 2024. DBT is in the process of correcting the record on the PQ response referenced in your FOI request.
Second Freedom of Information request
A second FOI request, also made on 30 August 2025, was as follows:
“Please provide a copy of the export licences granted to UAV Tactical Systems Ltd post Sept 2024 relevant to what has been supplied to Israel. If you are not prepared to share this information, please provide an explanation as to why. Please provide a template of the checks that were used to complete the process for granting the licences to UAV Tactical Systems Ltd. Again if you are not prepared to provide details of the checks undertaken, please provide an explanation of why that is the case.”
The response:
“Annex A contains the type of licence issued, the ML rating of the goods, and the Annual Report Summary goods descriptions of the items. The Annex contains information relating to export licensing decisions from 1 September 2024 up to 31 July 2025, the date of the last Israel export licensing management release.
The request relating to ‘template of checks’ was refused disclosure.”
The information provided by DBT confirms that military/dual use export licences were issued to UAV Tactical Systems Ltd.
In early 2026, it was reported that Elbit Systems UK (a subsidiary of Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems) had completed the full acquisition of UAV Tactical Systems Ltd.
Unanswered questions at the heart of UK arms licensing
The issue remains as I see it, in the second paragraph of Alexander’s answer “Each licence has been assessed to ensure that the items were not for use by the Israeli military in military operations in Gaza.” (emphasis added).
The detail of what was exported from the UK to Israel clearly states that they were components for use in military equipment. What sort of assessment is undertaken to determine that military equipment was not for use by the Israeli military in military operations in Gaza? Once the goods arrive in Israel, who can prove where they go?
There was once a border crossing into Lebanon close to Metula known as ‘The Good Fence’. A sign at that crossing read: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”. (Isaiah 2:4).
What does the UK’s, the USA’s and all the other countries’ continued support for death and destruction say about that learning?
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