U.K. defends decision to restrict arms to Israel; Netanyahu calls it shameful

Healey stressed Tuesday that the country remains “a staunch ally” of Israel, adding that “our determination to stand with Israel, to be part of the collective defense if they come under direct attack again, as they have done before, remains resolute and absolute.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the announcement “shameful.”

“Days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, the UK government suspended thirty arms licenses to Israel,” he wrote in a thread on X, adding that five British citizens are still being held hostage in Gaza. “With or without British arms, Israel will win this war and secure our common future.”

Former prime minister Boris Johnson accused the current leader, Keir Starmer, and Foreign Secretary David Lammy of “abandoning Israel,” while Britain’s chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said on X: “It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel, has announced a partial suspension of arms licences.”

However, both Oxfam and Amnesty International said the British government’s actions were insufficient.

Oxfam’s chief executive, Halima Begum, welcomed Britain’s recognition “of the clear risk” that its arms were being used “in serious breaches” of international humanitarian law. But, she said in a statement Monday, the number of export licenses, as well as the decision to continue supplying components for F-35 fighter jets “that have been dropping 2,000-pound bombs on Palestinians for months now, is nowhere near adequate.”

Amnesty International said the decision was “too limited,” with its U.K. chief executive Sacha Deshmukh arguing in a statement that the exemption of the F-35 program “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.”

Healey said Tuesday that his government did not introduce a suspension for F-35 components as it is “hard to distinguish” which are used for Israeli jets. “This is a global supply chain, with the UK a vital part of that supply chain,” he told the BBC. “We are not prepared to put at risk the operation of fighter jets that are central to our own UK security, that of our allies and of NATO.”

Here’s what else to know

A 17-year-old Palestinian was killed and his father injured in an Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Tulkarm, a spokeswoman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society said Tuesday. A total of six people have been injured since the new operation in Tulkarm began Monday, she said. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 30 Palestinians have been killed and about 130 wounded in the West Bank since last Wednesday.

The armed wing of Hamas said the group is operating under new instructions on how to act if Israeli forces approach areas where hostages are being held. In a video released Monday, a day after the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six hostages from Gaza, Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obaida said that “Netanyahu’s insistence on releasing the prisoners through military pressure, instead of concluding a deal, will mean that they will return to their families in coffins.”

Polio vaccinations in Gaza continued for a third day on Tuesday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry said almost 160,000 children received vaccines in the first two days of the campaign, which aims to immunize more than 600,000 children, after the highly contagious disease was detected in the besieged enclave for the first time in 25 years.

The U.N. Security Council will convene Wednesday to hold its first official discussion about the hostage situation since Oct. 7, Israel’s envoy to the United Nations Danny Danon wrote on X.

At least 40,819 ​​people have been killed and 94,291 injured in Gaza since the war started, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 340 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza.