The UK has moved to immediately suspend 30 arms export licences to Israel after a review by the new Labour government found a “clear risk” that UK arms may be used in serious violation of humanitarian law relating to the treatment of Palestinian detainees and the supply of aid to Gaza.
The suspension will cover components for military aircraft including fighter aircraft, helicopters and drones.
The Foreign Office said the two-month review had raised concerns about the way Israel had conducted itself in the conflict in Gaza.
No definitive conclusion has been reached about whether UK arms export licences have contributed to the destruction in the territory. But the scale of the destruction and the number of civilian deaths caused great concern, the Foreign Office said.
The suspensions represent one-tenth of the 350 extant licenses and do not include parts for the F-35 Joint Fighter Strike programme unless the UK-supplied part is specific to a jet plane for use exclusively by Israel.
The move, which was coordinated between the Foreign Office, the business department and the attorney general, is likely to help the foreign secretary, David Lammy, overcome what may a highly charged revolt at the Labour party annual conference.
But it will lead to strains with Joe Biden’s administration in the US, which has repeatedly said it sees no basis in international humanitarian law to suspend arms exports.
The UK government is also facing a growing range of domestic court challenges, including proceedings due to start on Tuesday.
Officials were reluctant to link the 30 suspended arms export licences to specific breaches of international humanitarian law but pointed out that the government had been in so far fruitless negotiation with the Israeli government to gain access to Palestinian detainees either through British judicial figures or the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Ministers were eager to emphasise that the suspension did not represent a step away from the UK’s commitment to Israel’s security and pointed out that such suspensions had occurred in previous Israeli conflicts.
Suspension decisions were endorsed by Margaret Thatcher in 1982, Gordon Brown in 2009 and under the coalition government in 2014. Arms export licences were also suspended to Egypt in 2013 and Russia in 2014.
Officials said Lammy and his aides had been given no access to the decision-making process on arms sales made by the previous Conservative government. But Labour ministers will have reached a different decision on the basis of similar evidence.
The Conservatives conducted four reviews of the evidence of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law but never published the conclusions or explanations. Lammy, by contrast, published an explanation of his legal reasoning.
More details soon …