Responding to an announcement from the Foreign Secretary David Lammy this afternoon that the UK was suspending around 30 out of some 350 arms export licences for military equipment for Israel, Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said:  

“While this decision appears to demonstrate that the UK has finally accepted the very clear and disturbing evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, it’s unfortunately too limited and riddled with loopholes.

“Exempting the F-35 fighter jet programme - essentially giving this programme a blank cheque to continue despite knowing that F-35s are being used extensively in Gaza - is a catastrophically bad decision for the future of arms control and misses a clear obligation to hold Israel accountable for its extensive war crimes and other violations.

“Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have already killed and injured tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including entire families wiped out in their homes, displaced people killed in their tents, and aid workers and journalists apparently targeted while doing their jobs.

“Today’s decision means that while ministers apparently accept that Israel may be committing war crimes in Gaza, it is nevertheless continuing to risk complicity in war crimes, apartheid - and possible genocide - by Israeli forces in Gaza and elsewhere in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“We need to see a complete halt - with no loopholes, including for components for F-35s supplied to the USA for onward export to the Israeli military - to all UK arms transfers to Israel.”