The UK would cease arms sales to Israel if it was found to have breached international law amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza, Oliver Dowden has said.
The deputy Prime Minister told the BBC the UK would not “supply those arms” if it could not do so legally – while Labour warned of “serious concerns” over a “breach in international humanitarian law” as the conflict reached its sixth month since the October 7 Hamas attack.
Dowden spoke amid rising pressure on the government to publish legal advice on continued arms sales to the Middle Eastern country, following the recent killings of seven aid workers, and three Brits, by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza, and subsequent political fallout.
It comes as the government announced a Royal Navy vessel would be deployed to help get aid to Gaza via a humanitarian sea corridor from Cyprus – alongside up to £9.7m in funding.
Dowden said: “If it is the case that we can’t lawfully… do so, of course we won’t supply those arms, but that is precisely the position, for example… of the United States or any other country around the world.”
“We rightly hold ourselves to a high standard, and we hold the countries to whom we export arms to a high standard, and I think that is what you would expect.
“And it contrasts so strongly, our adherence to very high values, with the appalling atrocities that have been committed by terrorist organisations against Israel.”
He also told Sky News: “The manner in which some people are seizing on this issue and trying to hold Israel to incredibly high standards… of course it is right that we hold Israel to high standards, but I just think there is a bit of relish from some people about the way in which they are pushing this case against Israel.”
More than 1,100 people were killed on October 7, which triggered Israel’s military action in Gaza, which has seen more than 33,000 Palestinians killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health authority, as well as mass displacement and a humanitarian crisis.
Hamas took 250 people as hostages; approximately 130 of whom remain in captivity.
Foreign secretary Lord Cameron – who advises the business secretary Kemi Badenoch on issuing arms export licences based on legal advice – has warned Britain’s support for Israel is not unconditional, and warned in the Sunday Times: “This must never happen again.”
Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy told Sky News he had “serious concerns about a breach in international humanitarian law” by Israel.
He told Sky News: “Far too many people have died, 33,000 now. Many women, many children, and I think it is serious when we have senior judges who are on our Supreme Court who raise issues about the clear risk of breaches in international law.”
Lammy urged Cameron to “publish the legal advice” and to appear in the House of Commons to answer MPs questions about the ongoing conflict, and the concerns over arms exports “for the British people because it would mean that we are complicit in that action.”