The UK High Court ruled on 30 January that a legal challenge over London’s military support for Israel will be heard in May, with the case set to focus on the Labour government’s decision to continue delivering F-35 components during the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
“The F-35 carve-out decision is one of considerable public importance in the UK and more broadly. There is a powerful public interest in a quick, final determination of its legality, one way or the other,” High Court judge Justice Chamberlain said in his ruling.
The legal challenge was filed by the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq and the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (Glan) against the UK Department for Business and Trade weeks after the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Last September, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced that the UK would suspend 30 out of 350 active arms export licenses to Israel. However, the suspension included a loophole to continue shipping F-35 components to a global pool that could end up in Israeli warplanes.
UK Defense Secretary John Healey told British media that F-35 components were “deliberately” excluded as 20 countries use them, and it would be “hard to distinguish” which components would go into Israeli jets. “[The] vast majority of other parts our country exports to Israel are either not related to the conflict or maybe used for Israel’s defense,” Healy told the BBC at the time.
According to a January 2025 report by Canadian NGO Project Ploughshares, the UK has supplied more than $6.7 billion worth of components to produce the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter plane. UK-based manufacturers are only second to the US in the number of sub-awards obtained to develop F-35 parts that often end up in Israel’s fleet of F-35Is.
“The UK government cannot continue to claim ignorance when its military exports are contributing to a war that has seen tens of thousands of civilians killed and displaced. The reality is that British-made components are helping keep Israeli F-35s operational, and the refusal to restrict their supply undermines international arms control efforts,” Dr. Iain Overton, Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), said.
Last October, arms control experts and researchers told Middle East Eye (MEE) that Israel has had to rely on its fleet of F-35 jets to maintain the high volume of strikes inside Gaza and Lebanon. “They need all of their planes to participate,” said Noam Perry, strategic research coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) Action Center for Corporate Accountability.
In December, Drop Site News revealed that hundreds of arms shipments, including F-35 fighter jet components, were secretly shipped to the US from a British airbase in Norfolk since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
