The House of Commons was unusually united in horror but bitterly divided in policy during a late-night debate on 2 June 2025, as MPs clashed over Britain’s continued military exports to Israel amid the carnage in Gaza.
It is a debate that comes as Israel’s campaign in the coastal strip, launched in October 2023, has left tens of thousands dead and international legal scholars warning of a “plausible risk of genocide,” as determined by the International Court of Justice. The war is still killing untold numbers of civilians, with the Gaza Ministry of Health saying on the 3 June that at least 27 people have been killed and 90 injured by Israeli fire while waiting for aid distribution in Rafah, southern Gaza.
Steve Witherden, a Labour MP representing Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr, set the tone by quoting Tom Potokar, a British doctor working in Khan Yunis, who described Gaza as “a slaughterhouse.” Mr Witherden cited figures suggesting that more than 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or injured since the fighting began – “inconceivable,” he said – and castigated the government for continuing to export weapons “without pause, without transparency and without apparent regard for international humanitarian law.”
What is known is that according to the Gaza Ministry of Health detailed data set covering up to May 11, some 916 babies aged below one years old and 16,506 children aged under 18 years old number the dead. The wounded may be more than triple this if the patterns of harm found in previous explosive violence harm data are anything to go by.
The government’s policy has been to maintain a partial embargo since September 2024, suspending around 30 of 350 export licences to Israel. Yet, Mr Witherden alleged, a new report using data from Israel’s tax authority shows the flow of British arms is still considerable.
“Between October and December 2024, this Labour Government approved £127.6 million in single-issue arms licences to Israel—more than the total approved from 2020 to 2023 combined,” he said. His figures, he added pointedly, do not account for “open licences,” the murky mechanism that allows for ongoing military trade under a general authorisation.
Warinder Juss, another Labour MP, drew on a report in The Guardian that revealed thousands of British-made bombs, grenades and other munitions have continued to flow to Israel since the supposed partial ban. “These weapons,” he said, “may well have been used to kill and maim children in Gaza,” calling for a total suspension of arms exports.
Kim Johnson, the MP for Liverpool Riverside, pressed the government for answers on more than 500 flights by British military aircraft from Akrotiri in Cyprus to Israeli airspace, data that was taken from AOAV’s own research working with the UK investigations outfit Declassified.
While labelled “reconnaissance,” the Ministry of Defence has refused to confirm whether these flights carried military cargo. “Is there not clear evidence of serious international humanitarian law violations?” she asked, warning of Britain’s obligations to share intelligence with the International Criminal Court.
Further complicating matters is Britain’s role in the production of F-35 fighter jets, 15% of which are built with British components. Richard Burgon, the MP for Leeds East, pointed to the July 2024 al-Mawasi attack in Gaza, where F-35s dropped 2,000-lb bombs on a safe zone, killing 90 civilians and wounding 300. “If we want to avoid complicity in such Israeli war crimes,” he said, “do we not need to stop these exports immediately?”
The government’s answer, delivered by Douglas Alexander, Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security, was to acknowledge the gravity of the humanitarian crisis—“the way in which Israel is conducting its operations is indefensible, disproportionate, and… counterproductive to any lasting peace settlement”—while also defending Britain’s broader military-industrial entanglements.
Mr Alexander said that since September, the government has suspended export licences for items “that could be used in military operations in Gaza,” including F-16 fighter jet components, targeting systems and drone parts. But he argued that a small number of licences remain for equipment “that we assess would not be used in the current conflict,” such as air defence systems and military-grade body armour for journalists and aid workers.
The real sticking point, however, is the F-35 programme. Mr Alexander insisted that Britain’s role in supplying parts to the global pool for these aircraft—used by a dozen NATO countries—could not be disentangled to spare Israel alone. “It is not possible to suspend licensing of F-35 components for use by one F-35 nation without ceasing supply to the entire global F-35 programme,” he said, citing the potential damage to NATO’s deterrence and to European security more broadly.
For all the talk of balance, Mr Alexander’s explanation did not satisfy everyone. Rachael Maskell, a Labour MP, asked why Britain could not follow the precedent of 2019, when Turkey was ejected from the F-35 programme over its acquisition of Russian weapons. Mr Burgon pressed whether it was truly impossible to create a conditional licence to prevent components from ending up in Gaza.
Mr Alexander’s answer was blunt: Britain is but one partner in the vast supply chain for the F-35, making up 15% of the components. Any attempt to pick and choose end-users, he argued, would unravel the entire system. “We are not directly sending parts to Israel for the F-35s,” he insisted. “Direct shipments to Israel are suspended.”
Nonetheless, critics in Parliament warned that such an approach amounts to moral evasion. Mr Witherden’s final question captured the dissonance: “Where is our red line?” he asked. “The credibility of this House depends not just on what we condemn, but on what we enable, and history will remember that we enabled too much.”
The debate has left Britain in an uncomfortable position—one foot planted in international human rights law, the other in the mechanics of the global arms trade. Ministers vow that their policy is sober, balanced and transparent. But in the wreckage of Gaza, those words offer cold comfort to those who see in Britain’s continuing arms exports the machinery of complicity.
Did you find this story interesting? Please support AOAV's work and donate.
Donate