Matt Kennard
Drop Site News / May 7, 2025
After the UK adopted a new policy that it would not allow any weapons shipments that could be used in Gaza, Britain’s Labour government allowed the export of 8,630 separate munitions to Israel.
The information is revealed in a new report, based on Israeli Tax Authority data, conducted by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Progressive International, and Workers for a Free Palestine and shared with Drop Site News.
The report reveals four separate shipments from the UK to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv between September 2024 and February 2025.
The Department for Business and Trade, which oversees British arms exports, refused to specify what the deliveries contained. A UK government spokesman instead told Drop Site News, “In September, we suspended export licenses to Israel for items used in military operations in Gaza. Our remaining licenses relate to non-military items, military items for civilian use or not for use in military operations in Gaza, or components for items for re-export to other countries.”
But the Israeli authorities categorized the items delivered as “Bombs, Grenades, Torpedoes, Mines, Missiles And Similar Munitions Of War And Parts Thereof.”
In September 2024, a flight carrying 528 items in this category arrived in Israel from the UK. In November, a flight carrying a further 4,500 munitions arrived. The following January and February, UK flights carrying 3,602 individual munitions were delivered. The Israeli imports are organized by month and use customs codes to identify the type of product being delivered.
The UK government is facing calls for transparency and a full arms embargo on Israel from organizers and politicians alike. The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which co-authored the new report, is demanding the UK government release a complete account of the shipments and calling for an immediate and total arms embargo on Israel. Jeanine Hourani, a representative of the PYM, told Drop Site News, “These findings confirm what we already knew: Britain is complicit in the genocide of our people. But, while the government enables the flow of weapons for war and ethnic cleansing, the British people stand with Gaza.”
“Our movement must continue to apply pressure and use this new evidence to escalate,” she added. “We will continue to build with left forces, trade unionists, and people of conscience to enact a people’s arms embargo and end Britain’s collaboration in the genocide.”
Next week, the UK High Court will hear a case on the UK’s role in supplying weapons to Israel.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now independent MP for Islington North, has been leading parliamentary efforts to gain transparency about Britain’s extensive, but secretive, military and intelligence support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
“When will the UK government come clean about the reality of military cooperation with Israel?” Corbyn asked, adding that “the public deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity, and we are not going anywhere until we have established the truth.”
The suspension
As Israel began its assault on Gaza in October 2023, the UK made a shipment of 150,000 bullets to Israel, according to the report.
Following this, UK shipments carrying 150 items under the category of “rocket launchers; flame-throwers; grenade launchers; torpedo tubes and similar projectors” arrived in Israel in December 2023 and April 2024. The UK also sent 299 items under the category covering tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and parts for such vehicles, in six shipments spanning from 2024 to January 2025.
Mark Smith, a Foreign Office official, resigned in August 2024 over UK arms to Israel saying he had witnessed from inside the government “not just moral failure but conduct that I believe crossed the threshold into complicity with war crimes.”
In September 2024, soon after Labour was elected, the new foreign minister David Lammy announced the UK would suspend a tranche of UK weapons licenses for Israel.
The new policy, a departure from the previous Conservative government, claimed to prohibit “arms export licenses to Israel for use in military operations in Gaza.” The government said it “has taken the decision…following a review of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law.”
There was an immediate suspension of 29 licenses for items used in Gaza, from a total of around 350. The government added that its “assessment concludes there is a clear risk certain military exports to Israel might be used in violations of International Humanitarian Law.”
The UK government said, “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.”
Export licenses which could not have a military use in Gaza were preserved, including trainer aircraft and other non-military items, the government added. But the specific licenses suspended have still not been made public, raising suspicions about government claims.
“The government is yet to respond to our call for a full, public inquiry into the UK’s role in Israel’s military assault in Gaza,” Corbyn told Drop Site News. “This shocking new information could explain why.”
F-35 parts
The multinational F-35 fighter jet program coordinates the construction and maintenance of F-35s around the world. A key facilitator of the program, the UK produces 15% of the parts for each F-35 plane, although Lockheed Martin boasts that this percentage is likely far higher. These components get sent around the world for incorporation into new jets and maintenance of existing fleets. Any suspension of this program would have a significant impact on Israel’s military capabilities. The plane has been used to bomb Gaza and Lebanon.
F-35 components were explicitly excluded from the government’s decision to be compliant with humanitarian law, allowing the UK to continue exporting them—a controversial carveout within the UK’s stated policy. However, the government did ban the transfer of F-35 parts directly to Israel from Britain.
Labour defence minister Maria Eagle confirmed that before the ban on direct exports, between October 2023 and August 2024, there were fourteen transfers of F-35 components from RAF Marham, a UK military base in Norfolk, to Israel.
The Israeli import data appears to match the Labour minister’s statement, showing fourteen transfers of aircraft parts between October 2023 and August 2024. These transfers appear in the data as courier shipments of items under “Customs Code 88” of the Israeli Customs Book, which refers to “Aircraft, spacecraft, and parts thereof.” The items were classified as “parts of airplanes, helicopters, or unmanned aircraft,” along with one shipment classified as “parachutes, parachute accessories, and parts thereof.”
Eagle added, however, that “in keeping with the Government’s announcement on arms exports in September [2024], there have been no exports of F-35 parts direct to Israel via RAF Marham since the licensing suspension.”
But evidence suggests that these transfers did not stop in September. The import data shows a further thirteen courier shipments of aircraft parts under “Customs Code 88” directly from the UK to Israel taking place from October 2024 to March 2025.
Eleven of the shipments carried items classified as “parts of airplanes, helicopters, or unmanned aircraft”, with one covering “parachutes, parachute accessories, and parts thereof” and one carrying “rotor parts.”
The Department for Business and Trade would not say if these aircraft parts were for the F-35.
A government spokesperson instead told Drop Site News, “Exports to the global F-35 program have been excluded from that decision…because it is not currently possible to suspend licensing of F-35 components for use by Israel without prejudicing the entire programme, including its broader strategic role in NATO.”
The amended F-35 export license contains a loophole that allows for the export of parts to Israel for “re-export” to third countries. This loophole would enable the UK government to continue sending F-35 parts to Israel for incorporation into the construction of new fighter jets, some of which will ultimately be obtained by Israel.
Graham Maher, from Workers for a Free Palestine, called for an immediate stop to all UK shipments of military aircraft parts to Israel.
“Over the past few weeks, we have seen workers in France and Morocco take action to halt the transfer of F-35 parts to Israel on Maersk ships,” he told Drop Site News. “Their brave actions serve as a reminder of the power we have as workers to intervene in the supply chain of genocide. The ongoing British complicity outlined in these findings comes with an urgent duty to take action and enforce an arms embargo on Israel from below.”
RAF Akrotiri
Sam Perlo-Freeman is research coordinator at London-based Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), a group which monitors UK arms exports and their use in human rights abuses.
“The government needs to urgently explain how Israel imported munitions from the UK after the suspension of licenses for equipment for use in Gaza,” Perlo-Freeman told Drop Site News. “What are these weapons, and how is their export consistent with the government’s stated policy? Were they exported from the UK itself, or from the UK’s military base on Cyprus? Are they supplied by UK companies, or is the government using the Akrotiri base to help the US supply munitions to Israel?”
The UK’s sprawling airbase on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, is a 40-minute flight time from Tel Aviv. It has secretly facilitated the transfer of weapons to Israel from depots around Europe since the beginning of its war in Gaza, and has been the staging post for the near-daily spy flights the UK military has carried out over Gaza in support of Israel since December 2023. These flights continue.
The UK’s Cyprus base has also seen regular RAF military transport flights to Israel, mainly huge C-17s and A400s, whose cargo remains obscure. These flights include the months when delivery of UK munitions were registered by Israeli customs authorities.
Perlo-Freeman added: “This new information shows how the Minister of Defence is able to operate completely outside any scrutiny or accountability, potentially enabling the delivery of lethal equipment to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza with zero transparency. Either way, this import data provides further evidence of UK government responsibility for war crimes. The government must clearly address these questions and not hide behind vague denials and the secrecy afforded by overseas military bases.”
The UK Foreign Office and UK Ministry of Defence received but ignored Drop Site News’s request for information and comment.
Matthew Kennard is an English author and journalist; he was previously the head of investigations at the investigative journalism website Declassified UK, which he co-founded with author and historian Mark Curtis
In collaboration with Abdulla Sabir and Inès Khoury
