The Times reported that the UK has delayed its decision to ban arms sales to Israel for several weeks. This decision comes after officials were instructed to review evidence of potential war crimes from Israel’s aggression in Gaza.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy is facing pressure from Labour Party MPs to announce a comprehensive arms export ban. However, ministers prefer suspending specific export licenses that could be linked to the suspected crimes in Gaza.
British arms exports to Israel are relatively modest compared to those of the United States, with the UK’s arms sales to Israel totaling only £18.2 million last year.
Despite this, there is hesitancy to disrupt the UK’s role in building F-35 fighter jets, which campaign activists claim were used in bombing Gaza, according to the British newspaper cited by Al Jazeera.
The issue of arms sales is one of several potential points of tension in UK-Israel relations, which have been strained since the Labour Party came to power.
Meanwhile, Oxfam placed a model of a Mark 84 bomb weighing 2,000 pounds, one of the heaviest bombs used by Israel in Gaza, outside the British Parliament. The charity wrote “Stop Arming Israel” on the model, and published estimates that about 7,000 Palestinians could be killed or injured in Gaza during the 33-day summer parliamentary recess.
Oxfam surrounded the bomb model with a carpet of about 2,000 red roses for adult victims and yellow roses for child victims, symbolizing the expected death toll from the Israeli military and the Israeli hostages still in captivity. The organization stated that the British government is aware that the weapons supplied to Israel could be used to commit genocide in Gaza.
Separately, some MPs from different parties are calling on the British government to intervene to stop an American oil tanker carrying 300,000 barrels of jet fuel destined for the Israeli military in Gaza, which is currently docked in British waters at Gibraltar.
