For more than 15 months, Britain has quietly maintained a near-constant aerial presence above Gaza, at least until this week.
Nearly 600 surveillance sorties have been flown by Shadow R1 aircraft operated by the Royal Air Force’s 14 Squadron, launched from the UK’s base at Akrotiri in Cyprus. These flight may have now ended. It is too soon to say.
Officially, these surveillance flights above Gaza support hostage rescue. Unofficially, their frequency, secrecy and timing raise uncomfortable questions about the extent of Britain’s involvement in a campaign that has levelled neighbourhoods and killed thousands.
RAF flights have continued through ceasefires, bombing raids and mounting allegations of war crimes. On 8th June 2024, when Israeli forces stormed Nuseirat refugee camp to rescue four hostages, killing 274 Palestinians in the process, British aircraft were present in the skies. Over that period, the RAF flew 24 missions. In February, a British plane appears to have landed at Nevatim, an Israeli airbase home to the F-35 fleet accused of wreaking destruction on Gaza. Whether Britain’s unarmed aircraft are gathering intelligence for hostage recovery, or enabling a broader and more lethal campaign, remains unclear. That ambiguity is itself the problem.
The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the parliamentary body charged with oversight of Britain’s spy agencies, has warned that such matters often lie beyond its reach. In its International Partnerships report, it noted that ministers can veto sharing critical information on national security grounds—even from a committee whose members hold the highest clearance. Oversight, in other words, is conditional on executive discretion. The result is opacity at the very point where transparency is most needed.
Britain’s history of working with questionable partners is long and chequered. Close allies such as the United States have tortured terrorism suspects; Saudi Arabia beheads dissidents. Israel is currently accused before the International Court of Justice of committing genocide. None of this prohibits cooperation, but it demands due diligence. That due diligence, however, appears to be a flexible concept.
Under UK policy, intelligence sharing is subject to a risk threshold. If there is a “real risk” that shared intelligence may contribute to torture, unlawful killing or other abuses, ministers must be consulted. In practice, such consultations rarely halt operations. Between April 2020 and March 2021, then Conservative ministers signed off on operations where detainees faced treatment that met or exceeded that threshold. In one case, the Foreign Secretary authorised a programme even after being told that the partner nation’s compliance standards differed “very significantly” from Britain’s. The risk was known. The work continued.
Even where intentions are narrow—such as hostage rescue—the use of intelligence can stray. The ISC is blunt: foreign partners may repurpose British intelligence for unrelated, and potentially unlawful, ends. Assurances are taken, but these are “necessary but imperfect”. The credibility of such pledges, the report notes, depends not just on the words used, but on whether the foreign official offering them has “the clout to deliver”.
That is hardly a robust safeguard against abuse.
The legal stakes are considerable. Under international law, particularly Article 16 of the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on State Responsibility, a state that knowingly assists another in committing a wrongful act shares responsibility for that act. If British surveillance facilitated strikes later deemed unlawful, the UK may be exposed; not merely morally, but also legally.
Ministers maintain that all operations comply with humanitarian law. Yet scrutiny has been systematically obstructed. MPs have received boilerplate replies. Requests for costings, flight logs and operational justifications have been deflected. NGOs have been left in the dark. A growing chorus from the likes of Amnesty International, legal experts, campaigners, and opposition MPs, have asked if Britain has been complicit in Israeli war crimes. Jeremy Corbyn has demanded a Calls for a public inquiry have followed. Jeremy Corbyn has demanded a “Chilcot-style” investigation. The government has shown no inclination to oblige.
This lack of candour is dangerous. If Britain is confident it has not enabled war crimes, it should welcome the chance to prove it.
If it is not, it must reckon with the possibility that its military and intelligence agencies are already entangled in something far messier than official statements suggest.
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