The Ministry of Defence has refused to disclose how much it spent flying personnel to Israel during the first two years of the Gaza war, citing national security concerns and refusing to reveal details that could shed light on the scale of Britain’s military engagement with a military that stands accused of genocide.

The decision was made in response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by AOAV, which sought information on the number of Ministry of Defence personnel travelling to Israel between 7 October 2023 and 7 October 2025, together with the cost of those journeys and a monthly breakdown of flights booked through official government travel systems.

The MOD confirmed that it holds information relating to travel expenditure but refused to release any of it.

Officials said that publishing either the number of flights or the associated costs could reveal information about operational activity and would therefore pose a risk to national security. This, needless to say, is something AOAV feels is a rather thin argument, but the British military have never been particularly robust when it comes to their own transparency.

The predictable refusal comes as part of AOAV’s scrutiny of Britain’s relationship with Israel during a conflict that has become the deadliest in recent memory for civilians. Since Hamas launched its attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has caused catastrophic destruction across the territory.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and vast areas of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed.

Throughout the conflict, the UK government has maintained that it supports Israel’s right to self-defence while calling for compliance with international humanitarian law. At the same time, British military assets have operated across the wider region. RAF surveillance flights have been conducted in support of hostage recovery efforts, Royal Navy vessels have been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean, and British forces have participated in wider regional security operations linked to escalating tensions across the Middle East.

AOAV, alongside other human rights organisations, parliamentarians and transparency campaigners have repeatedly sought greater clarity over the extent of Britain’s military, intelligence and diplomatic engagement with Israel during the conflict. Questions have been raised about arms exports, intelligence sharing, military cooperation and the movement of personnel between the two countries. The answers are as small as the questions are large.

Against this sad backdrop of opacity and denialism stands the MOD’s latest response.

It’s clear, then, that official travel to Israel forms part of activity the government considers sufficiently sensitive to warrant protection under multiple provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Officials in their Whitehall offices invoking exemptions relating to national security, defence and international relations do so with a predictable blandness. Disclosure, their argument goes, could provide information useful to hostile actors and undermine the effectiveness of British military operations. The evidence of this is absent, but when you invoke the ghost of national defence you rely on emotion, not data, to underpin your authority.

The department doesn’t stop there. They argued that publication could damage Britain’s international relationships and compromise wider government objectives in the region. They don’t ask whether engaging with Israel in the first place damages Britain’s international relationships and compromise wider government objectives in the region.

So here we are. This refusal means, yet again, the British public remains unable to establish how many Ministry of Defence-funded journeys were made to Israel during the conflict, how much those trips cost, or whether the volume of travel increased during key phases of military operations in Gaza.

Dr Iain Overton, Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence, said: “When a conflict has resulted in such extraordinary civilian suffering, public scrutiny of government engagement becomes more important, not less. The Ministry of Defence is asking the public to trust that these activities are benign while refusing to disclose even the most basic information about their scale. National security exemptions have an important role, but they should not become a blanket shield against accountability where matters of profound public interest are concerned.”

AOAV is seeking an internal review of the decision.