UK looked for ways to suspend F-35 parts to Israel, court documents reveal
F-35 fighter jets roll on the tarmac during a multinational aerial exercise at the Ovda air force base in Israel in 2019
Dania Akkad reports in Middle East Eye on 14 January 2025:
Senior British defence officials asked their US counterparts running the F-35 fighter jet programme if there were options available to stop UK-made components from reaching Israel without disrupting the global fleet, new court documents reveal.
But the UK had concluded by last July that there were “significant obstacles” in the way of any such ban, with Defence Secretary John Healey warning Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds that month that the programme, a backbone of British and Nato air power, would be disrupted “within weeks” if the parts were suspended.
Six weeks later, the UK government announced it was suspending 30 licences for the export of arms to Israel, but UK-made components for the F-35, which has been critical to Israel’s air war on Gaza, sent through third countries to Israel were not on the list.
The revelation of the UK’s engagement with the US over the programme is among further details which have emerged in the legal challenge brought by the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (Glan) and the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq in the High Court over UK arms exports to Israel.
Campaigners have accused the UK government of breaching its own human rights and international law obligations by continuing to allow the export of F-35 parts for possible use by Israel despite determining that there is a clear risk that they could be used to commit war crimes.
The groups argue in their most recent filing that while the government has assessed the risk of suspending the licences for F-35 parts sent indirectly to Israel and decided against it given the threat to the entire F-35 programme, it has not thoroughly assessed the risk to Palestinians, nor to the international rule of law, of failing to follow its own guidelines and international treaty obligations.