The report released by three campaign groups says parts for the jet, which has been critical for Israel’s war on Gaza, appear to have arrived in Israel as recently as March, five months after the UK said it had suspended its direct exports over concerns they might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Data from the Israeli Tax Authority cited by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine and Progressive International shows that 8,630 separate munitions have been sent from the UK to Israel since the suspensions.
The munitions fall under a category of import labelled “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and similar munitions of war and parts thereof”.
Most of the shipments cited in the report happened after the government’s arms suspension.
Soon after the suspensions, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told parliament that “much of what we send is defensive in nature. It is not what we describe routinely as arms”.
The report’s authors write: “On the basis of the evidence in this report, it appears that David Lammy has misled parliament and the public about arms shipments to Israel.”
In response to the study, nearly two dozen MPs have written to Lammy, calling on him to come before parliament to respond to the allegations.
“We urge the government to disclose the details of all arms exports to Israel since October 2023 and to immediately halt all arms exports to Israel,” they wrote.
“This could not be more urgent given the risk that British-made weapons could be used to enact Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people.”
They said that the public “deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity”.
The report’s release comes a week before the government is set to return to the High Court to face a legal challenge, brought by Palestinian rights group Al-Haq and the Global Legal Action Network, to its arms exports to Israel.
Over a year into the judicial review, the case has most recently focused on the government’s decision to continue sending UK-made F-35 parts to Israel through third countries.
