Britain’s extraordinary surveillance operation over Gaza may have created one of the most extensive external intelligence archives of that terrible and – to some – genocidal war. Yet nearly three years after the flights began, the British government has disclosed remarkably little about what its military aircraft recorded, what flight intelligence was passed to Israel, or whether material relevant to possible violations of international humanitarian law has been preserved, examined or acted upon.
Such concerns are brought sharply into focus when it comes to the killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers by Israeli forces on 1 April 2024.
Three of those killed, John Chapman, James Kirby and James “Jim” Henderson, were British military veterans.
What we also know is that an RAF Shadow R1 surveillance aircraft spent approximately five hours flying over Gaza that day. The Ministry of Defence has subsequently confirmed that it holds video footage from the flight, but it refuses to release this footage on ‘national-security’ grounds. Why releasing that footage would harm national security is definitely not clear, unless by ‘national-security’ they mean Israel’s.
What we do know is that flight-tracking data showed that the aircraft left RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus at around 5pm local time and returned at 10.49pm. The Israeli strikes on the World Central Kitchen convoy occurred shortly afterwards, at approximately 11.09pm, 11.11pm and 11.13pm.
What we do not know is what the RAF aircraft recorded in the moments immediately preceding the attack. Did they tell Jerusalem that there were no Israeli hostages on the torn earth below? And, if so, did that then give a green light to the IDF that they could bomb with impunity?
Certainly these are persistent questions. Research by Action on Armed Violence has revealed the scale of Britain’s aerial surveillance of Gaza. AOAV identified at least 606 RAF reconnaissance flights over or near the occupied Palestinian territory between 3 December 2023 and 25 July 2025, together with another 17 missions operated by American defence contractors, bringing the identified total to at least 623 flights.
The flights seem to have been conducted from RAF Akrotiri by 14 Squadron using Shadow R1 aircraft, an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance platform. Individual missions frequently lasted five or six hours.
Some months saw as many as 49 flights. And the surveillance continued during some of the most destructive episodes of the Gaza war.
AOAV found, for example, that RAF Shadow aircraft flew 24 missions towards Gaza in the two weeks before Israel’s 8 June 2024 operation at Nuseirat refugee camp, in which four Israeli hostages were rescued and 274 Palestinians were reported killed and more than 700 injured. The UN human-rights office has since said aspects of that IDF operation could amount to war crimes.
The British government has consistently insisted that its aircraft were unarmed and that the missions were conducted solely to help locate hostages held by Hamas.
That explanation, however, leaves unanswered a different question: what happened to everything the aircraft recorded?
An intelligence archive of the war
A Shadow R1 is a plane that the RAF describes as being part of its intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance capability.
AOAV’s investigation found that publicly available flight data often disappeared as aircraft approached Gaza, making it impossible to establish from open sources exactly where they flew or what they observed.
The result is that Britain may possess a substantial classified archive documenting events on the ground during hundreds of days of the conflict.
So did RAF aircraft record attacks on hospitals, refugee camps or humanitarian convoys? Did they capture the movement of civilians before strikes? Did British sensors record evidence capable of corroborating or contradicting Israeli accounts of particular attacks? Who received the intelligence?
Certainly, the British government has acknowledged that information relating to hostage rescue was passed to Israeli authorities. What remains far less clear is what safeguards existed to prevent intelligence collected for one purpose from being used for another.
AOAV subsequently discovered that the British operation extended beyond RAF aircraft. A US contractor working from RAF Akrotiri was flying surveillance missions connected to the British programme by December 2024, months earlier than had initially been understood.
On 11 December that year, a US-owned Beechcraft surveillance aircraft circled over Nuseirat for around 20 minutes. The following evening an Israeli attack on the refugee camp killed more than 30 Palestinians. The contractor aircraft and an RAF Shadow were operating around Gaza in the period surrounding the attack. This does not establish that British or contractor intelligence was used in the strike, but the proximity of the surveillance raised questions that the government has yet fully to answer.
AOAV also hgas found that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office held no human-rights risk assessments, ministerial approvals or internal guidance concerning British intelligence-sharing with Israel in relation to the programme, despite more than 600 RAF missions having taken place.
Evidence as well as intelligence
The central issue is what evidence Britain now possesses as a result of its spy flights.
The International Criminal Court is investigating alleged crimes committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. British surveillance imagery, signals intelligence or other recordings could potentially corroborate witness testimony, establish movements before attacks, clarify timelines or challenge official accounts.
When questioned about the World Central Kitchen footage, the Ministry of Defence said Britain would consider any formal request from the ICC for information relevant to investigations into war crimes.
But this does not answer whether British authorities themselves have systematically reviewed the material for evidence of possible breaches of international humanitarian law, whether potentially relevant recordings have been identified and preserved, or whether investigators have even been told what exists.
The killing of the World Central Kitchen workers shows that at least part of that record exists.
Whether justice will ever be allowed to see it is a very different matter entirely.
Did you find this story interesting? Please support AOAV's work and donate.
Donate