{"id":950924,"date":"2026-05-10T18:03:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T18:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/950924\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T18:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T18:03:22","slug":"labour-approves-selling-even-more-arms-to-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/950924\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour approves selling even more arms to Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has granted two new licences for the export of military equipment to Israel, including an \u00a38.7 ($11.85) million licence covering \u201ccomponents and technology for targeting equipment\u201d,\u00a0the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has revealed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The licences were issued\u00a0despite the British government\u2019s September 2024 suspension<\/a>\u00a0of such exports over fears they would be used in Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza. CAAT\u2019s analysis of UK export licensing statistics for the fourth quarter of 2025, published on 30 April, found that the UK issued export licences worth \u00a320.5 ($27.9) million in total for transfers to Israel during the quarter.<\/p>\n

The most significant of the new approvals was an Open Individual Export Licence for \u201ccomponents and technology for targeting equipment\u201d \u2014 a category of export the UK government had publicly suspended eight months earlier, citing the risk of use in Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza. When questioned about the licence, DBT replied that it \u201ccovers items for re-export from Israel, and the Government of Israel is not an end-user or ultimate end-user. This is consistent with our suspension\u201d.<\/p>\n

CAAT said the defence rested on a legal fiction. The watchdog warned of the risk of \u201cauto-diversion\u201d: a process by which Israel can fail to retransfer military equipment to its declared destination and instead assign it to an unauthorised end-user, such as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), for use in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Such a move would constitute a breach of the export licence and a potential criminal offence under UK law. British ministers have previously said they would revoke any licence should \u201cany evidence\u201d emerge that exported equipment had not reached its declared destination, but CAAT noted that the UK government makes no known efforts to verify what happens to its military exports after they leave Britain.<\/p>\n

The watchdog\u2019s concerns are not theoretical. In March, an investigation revealed that an Elbit-owned subsidiary in the UK had shipped dozens of drone components, including Watchkeeper engines, to Israel over an 18-month period.<\/p>\n

Israel had failed to retransfer the equipment to Romania as required by the licence, citing force majeure arising from its assault on Gaza. The contract with Romania has still not been fulfilled. Elbit announced it would start delivering the drones only two days after Romania threatened to cancel the contract.<\/p>\n

A second new licence covers components for military training aircraft, and related technology, for transfer to France, Greece, Israel and Italy \u2014 likely supplied by the US aerospace firm Moog for the M-346 Lead-In Fighter Trainer produced by Italy\u2019s Leonardo.<\/p>\n

The M-346 is used in every phase of advanced and pre-operational training for Israeli pilots before they fly combat missions in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon using F-16 and F-35 jets. Israel has caused massive devastation with F-35 jets across Gaza, Iran and Lebanon. Similar components shipped by Moog from the UK were recently seized by authorities in Belgium, who have since opened a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

CAAT\u2019s Research Coordinator Sam Perlo-Freeman said the new licences exposed the limits of the British government\u2019s stated policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese new export licenses show just how willing the UK is to continue enabling Israel\u2019s genocidal assaults, while staying within the technical rule of a vastly insufficient and ineffective policy towards IDF war crimes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe targeting equipment for which DBT granted a license, for transfer to and re-export by Israel, could easily be used in Gaza. Given Israel\u2019s history of weapons diversion and illicit transfers, and outstanding questions about Elbit drone components failing to arrive in Romania, there remains a grave risk that Israel will auto-divert the targeting equipment to the IDF for use in Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perlo-Freeman explained that the British government was leaning on a system of declarations it has no power to enforce. \u201cDBT is relying on end-user undertakings that hold no legal force in Israel, which the UK government does not check up on and cannot enforce. The exporter is technically in-the-clear, so long as it can\u2019t be shown they knew the end-user undertaking was false.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor<\/a>\u00a0is licensed under a\u00a0Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.\u00a0For other permissions, please\u00a0contact us<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has granted two new licences for the export of military…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":950925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-950924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116551601846173902","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}