UK proposal to revisit Israel arms license suspension ‘appalling’: Civil society groups

LONDON: The UK government’s overtures toward unblocking arms licenses to Israel have been condemned by five major civil society groups.

Amid outrage over the war on Gaza, the government suspended about 30 of 350 arms licenses to Israel in September 2024.

Components for the F-35 jet used by the Israeli Air Force were exempt from the partial suspension, despite the aircraft being used extensively to target civilian areas of Gaza.

In July 2024, three 2,000-pound bombs were dropped by F-35s on an area in Khan Younis that Israel had declared a “safe zone,” killing 90 Palestinians.

Peter Kyle, the government’s business and trade secretary, has now committed to revisiting UK-Israel trade relations and the partial pause on arms export licenses. Kyle told the London-based Jewish Chronicle that the two issues are “intrinsically linked.”