An F-35C Lightning II of U.S. Navy Strike Fighter Squadrons (VFA) 147 touches down at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi-Prefecture, Japan in November. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo
A legal challenge in Britain to try to ban sales of parts for Lockheed Martin F-35 jets that may end up in Israeli fighters used to carry out airstrikes on Gaza, has been defeated in the High Court in London.
Justices threw out the lawsuit brought by a coalition of human rights groups and charities, in a lengthy ruling Monday that said it was a politically sensitive matter best determined by the elected government and lawmakers and that the courts should not get involved.
Lord Justice Males and Mrs. Justice Steyn wrote that the case pivoted on a “much more focused” question than an exemption the government made for the aircraft components, supplied to a multi-country support program for the F-35 Lightning II, when it suspended some export licences for weapons sales in September.
“That issue is whether it is open to the court to rule that the U.K. must withdraw from a specific multilateral defense collaboration which is reasonably regarded by the responsible ministers as vital to the defense of the U.K. and to international peace and security, because of the prospect that some U.K.-manufactured components will or may ultimately be supplied to Israel, and may be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law in the conflict in Gaza,” the ruling said.
“Under our constitution, that acutely sensitive and political issue is a matter for the executive which is democratically accountable to parliament and ultimately to the electorate, not for the courts.”
The court agreed with government lawyers that it was impossible, on a practical basis, for the Ministry of Defense to prohibit components destined for an eight-country international parts pool from ending up on Israeli Air Force aircraft.
Doing so would require a total export ban that would place the entire F-35 program — in which Britain is the second largest supplier to Israel after the United States — in jeopardy, with serious implications for national defense and that of NATO and Europe.
September’s arms ban, which came after an internal government review found Israel’s actions may have breached international humanitarian law, included parts for fighter jets, but only applied to direct sales to Israel.
The court accepted the government’s argument that the constructive impact of the program on global peace and security had to be weighed against a “clear risk of risk of the arms being used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law.”
The bench handed down its decision after deliberating for six weeks following a four-day hearing in May.
However, the case dates back to the previous Conservative administration when Palestinian rights group Al-Haq first partnered with Global Legal Action Network, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam to seek a judicial review of all weapons sales to Israel.
Monday’s ruling relates only to the carve-out for the F-35 parts made by the government in September and means U.K.-made components can continue to be sold to Lockheed Martin for the global parts pool.
The plaintiffs’ argument was that the government had a responsibility to “respect and ensure respect in all circumstances” the need to protect civilians in theaters of war and to prevent genocide as required by the Geneva Conventions and the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The lawyers claimed Britain’s duty regards the Genocide Convention did not require genocide to have been committed, but whether there was a “serious risk” it would occur.
“The fact that those parts are now being transferred indirectly to Israel via the United States, rather than provided directly to Israel, does not minimize the severity of their impact on the ground in Gaza,” they said.
Last month, Britain was among five countries to sanction two far-right Israeli cabinet members — Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — for allegedly inciting “extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights” in the occupied West Bank.
