Trade Department Would Not “Hesitate” To Revoke Arms Licences To Israel

The Department of Trade would not “hesitate” to revoke arms licences to Israel if the evidence in favour of doing so presented itself, a minister for the department has told PoliticsHome.

Greg Hands, the Minister of Trade, said the Government and Foreign Office was monitoring the war in the Middle East very carefully in light of growing calls for an arms embargo in Israel in response to large numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza. 

“Whilst we have great concerns about what's happening on the humanitarian side in Gaza, the policy is unchanged here in this space,” he said.

“But the Government continues to monitor the situation in Gaza extremely closely and extremely regularly. We won’t hesitate to remove export licences if the evidence were to be presented. But at the moment, UK Government policy is unchanged.”

Countries who buy military equipment from Britain have to meet a set of criteria, including abiding by international humanitarian law. Since 7 October terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel, the Government has said Israel has the right to defend itself within the bounds of this international framework. 

The UK has sold £442 million worth of arms to Israel since 2015, according to Campaign Against Arms Trade, a pressure group which wants to end international arms trade. 

David Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, has said he has looked at the latest legal advice from the Foreign Office over whether Israel is abiding by international humanitarian law. On Wednesday the Foreign Secretary confirmed the UK would continue to sell arms to Israel for now. 

Hands told PoliticsHome records of new export licences issued to Israel were listed on a publicly available government database. The data was last updated in January this year and