The United Kingdom’s decision to suspend arms sales earmarked for Gaza is shameful and will not “change Israel’s determination to defeat Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
Hamas is “a genocidal terrorist organization that savagely murdered 1,200 people on October 7, including 14 British citizens,” he wrote in an English-language post on X.
“Just as Britain’s heroic stand against the Nazis is seen today as having been vital in defending our common civilization, so too will history judge Israel’s stand against Hamas and Iran’s axis of terror... With or without British arms, Israel will win this war and secure our common future,” Netanyahu wrote.
On Monday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the Labor government had suspended 30 arms contracts to Israel over concerns that the military equipment would be used for human-rights violations in the Gaza war.
“This is not a blanket ban,” he said in Parliament, adding that “this is not an arms embargo. It targets... approximately 350 licenses to Israel in total for items which could be used in the current conflict in Gaza.”
Most of the contracts would continue to be operative, he said, including the UK’s intentional collaboration with the global F-35 program that supplies aircraft for more than 20 countries.
"Crucial to wider peace and security"
Participation in this program is “crucial to wider peace and security,” he added. “Indeed, the effects of suspending all licenses for the F-35 program would undermine the global F-30 flight supply chain that is vital to the security of the UK [and] our allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”
The suspension was not a judgment on whether British arms were being used for human-rights violations in Gaza, but rather was based on a conclusion that there was a risk this could happen, Lammy said.
“It is with regret that I inform the House today [that] the assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law,” he said.
Among the items of concern were “important components which go into military aircraft, including fighter aircraft, helicopters, and drones, as well as items which facilitate ground targeting,” he added.
There was “no doubt that Hamas pays not the slightest heed to international humanitarian law and endangers civilians by embedding itself in the tightly concentrated civilian population and in civilian infrastructure,” Lammy said.
“There is no equivalence between Hamas terrorists and Israel’s democratic government,” he said.
Netanyahu said the IDF’s actions were within the boundaries of international law.
“Israel is pursuing a just war with just means, taking unprecedented measures to keep civilians out of harm’s way and comporting fully with international law,” he wrote on X.