Declassified UK: Keir Starmer resumes spy flights over Gaza

On 25 March, a Shadow R1 plane departed from RAF Akrotiri, Britain’s airbase in Cyprus, at 16:50 local time and returned some six hours later.

The aircraft turned its transponders off over the eastern Mediterranean, but its flight path showed clearly that it was headed for Gaza. Another spy plane was sent towards Gaza yesterday, indicating that surveillance flights might be returning to their previous rate of around one per day.

The last time a British surveillance flight was sent to the region was on 26 February, according to flight tracking data. This was during the ceasefirebetween Israel and Hamas.

Before then, Britain sent at least five spy flights to the region on hostage exchange days, raising concerns that the RAF was sharing intelligence on Hamas’ movements and helping Israel to prepare for a return to war.

The Shadow R1 planes are specialised in target acquisition, and the UK government has never made it clear to the public precisely what intelligence is being shared with Israel and how it is being shared.

The decision to send surveillance flights towards Gaza as Israel returns to its genocidal bombing campaign ought to draw serious scrutiny in Britain, yet the issue has been systematically ignored by the UK press.

The silence from the British media becomes even more deafening when considering that Israeli forces bombed a UK-registered charity and a UN facility in Gaza over recent days. The strike on the UN compound injured a British bomb disposal expert.

UK foreign secretary David Lammy called for a “transparent investigation” into the airstrike on the UN facility and for “those responsible to be held to account”. He added: “We strongly oppose Israel’s resumption of hostilities. We urgently want to see a return to a ceasefire”.

Yet Lammy is also complicit in the ongoing annihilation of Gaza. In addition to sending further spy flights, the UK government is refusing to impose a full  arms embargo or trade sanctions on Israel.

Meanwhile, the British authorities have continued to suppress criticism of Israel at home. Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, was questioned by the police this week for laying flowers at Trafalgar square to commemorate the victims of the Gaza genocide.

Kapos wrote in Al Jazeera how “it’s been clear that Israel’s plan is to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza in order to force as many people as possible to leave”, a policy which “has many differences from Nazi Germany’s plan to destroy Jewish society in Europe – but it also has many similarities”.

He continued: “As Israel resumes its indiscriminate bombing – murdering hundreds more civilians in Gaza – it’s vital for all of us in Britain to speak out now against our own government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide”.