Declassified UK Exclusive: New study reveals the scale of British intelligence gathering above Gaza, raising fears of complicity in Israeli war crimes
The Royal Air Force (RAF) has conducted at least 518 surveillance flights around Gaza since December 2023, an investigation by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) for Declassified UK has found.
The flights, carried out by 14 Squadron’s Shadow R1 aircraft from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, have been shrouded in secrecy, raising concerns about whether British intelligence has played a role in Israeli military operations that have resulted in mass civilian casualties in Gaza.
These revelations come as Israel faces allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC), with warrants issued for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
The UK government insists that the flights are purely for hostage recovery, but the lack of transparency has done little to allay suspicions that the intelligence gathered may be facilitating Israeli attacks.
Surveillance sorties continued during and after the ceasefire, despite Israel’s renewed bombing of Gaza killing hundreds of children.
Over 500 missions in 15 months
AOAV’s analysis of flight-tracking data shows that between 3 December 2023 and 27 March 2025, the RAF carried out at least 518 Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) flights over or close to Gaza’s airspace.
Both Labour and Conservative governments have enacted the policy, with at least 215 flights taking place during Keir Starmer’s tenure as prime minister and 303 under Rishi Sunak’s administration.
The frequency of flights remained high throughout 2024, with some months seeing as many as 49 sorties. The missions have typically lasted up to six hours, with the longest flight recorded at seven hours and four minutes.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Lynn Perry, Chief Executive of the children’s charity Barnardo’s, says: ‘The Spring Statement today offered little hope to the 4.3m children and their families who are living in poverty. In fact, the welfare changes announced today will make things even worse, putting an extra 50,000 children into relative poverty. These children face devastating impacts on their health, well-being and life opportunities long into adulthood.
‘While we welcome the investment to recruit 400 new foster carers, much more action is urgently needed to achieve the government’s ambition to create the healthiest generation of children. Planned freezes to universal credit will add to the worry facing families already struggling to make ends meet. Looking ahead to the Spending Review, we urge the government to prioritise investment in lifting children out of poverty – an investment in children is an investment in the country’s future.’
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Dr Sarah Hughes, CEO of mental health charity Mind, adds: ‘The extra cuts to benefits announced today are devastating and will push more people into a mental health crisis.
‘It’s a political choice to try fixing the public finances by cutting the incomes of disabled people, including people with mental health problems. Benefits are a lifeline for so many people. Cuts will push people into poverty. This is policy making by numbers with little recognition of the impact on real people’s lives.
In response to Just Stop Oil’s announcement this morning Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said:
“The history of democracies is built by groups of people like the Suffragettes, trade unionists, gay rights campaigners and anti-fracking activists who were brave enough to make themselves unpopular for a cause they believed in. With the benefit of hindsight we can see the debt we owe each of them for giving us rights and liberties, and protecting the things we care about.
“Whether you want to stand up for our planet against polluting profiteers, or save your local library from council spending cuts, the freedom to make your voice heard is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. Just Stop Oil paid a heavy price for raising their voices at a time when politicians and corporations are trying to silence peaceful protesters – in the streets and in the courts. We must not allow our hard-won right to protest to be stripped away, because it is the right that all other rights depend upon. Greenpeace and many others will continue to defend this proud tradition of taking action on issues that matter to make change possible.”
A Just Stop Oil participant getting arrested at Kingsbury oil terminal. A JSO / Vladamir Morozov image.Orcas are pleased that Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields are blocked and say that the killer apes need to just stop oil.
THE number of children living in poverty in Britain has reached a record high of almost 4.5 million, official figures revealed today.
Data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) showed 4.45 million children in households with relative low income after housing costs in the year to March 2024, up from 4.33m the previous year — the highest since records began in 2002-03.
A household is considered in relative poverty if its income falls below 60 per cent of the median after housing costs.
The official figure comes a day after government estimates showed that its welfare cuts will push 50,000 more children below the poverty line by 2030.
And a Resolution Foundation analysis said a weak economic outlook and benefit cuts will disproportionately impact lower-income families, reducing the average income for the poorest half by £500 on average over the next five years.
The think tank also said that Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s welfare cuts amount to £8.1 billion — far exceeding the £4.8bn stated by the government.
Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
The Labour government has been making it increasingly difficult to organise the National Palestine marches, now they are using the draconian Public Order Act in an attempt to intimidate us.
It’s a truism to say governments don’t like protest, and after 18 months of Palestine demonstrations ours is making its distaste for mass mobilisation abundantly clear. It’s using the Met police as its enforcer and the BBC as its propaganda tool.
Smearing protesters as anti-semitic hate marchers failed to have any impact on the size or frequency of the demonstrations, so the government has resorted to the using the Public Order Act against the march organisers and is placing ever more restrictive exclusion orders on the protests.
Negotiations between organisers and the police have become increasingly arduous as time after time conditions are changed at late notice, restrictions are imposed for no justifiable reason other than to deter and confuse protesters and make organising more difficult. And now the police have charged and questioned under caution various members of the movement’s leadership, alongside some of its high profile supporters.
In this Orwellian world, 87 year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor, Stephen Kapos, was called in for questioning by the Met. Refusing to be cowed Kapos made clear that it is vital for us all to continue to protest for Palestine and speak out against our own government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Khalid Abdalla, actor and activist, was also called in by the Met for questioning. In a statement made as he approached Charring Cross police station in central London he said he was both ‘incredibly sad’ but also ‘proud’ to attend his police interview. Sad because of what it says about the British state’s intension to subjugate the movement, proud to be on the right side of history.
Alex Kenny, Chair of StW, Lindsey German, StW Convenor, Andrew Murray, StW Deputy President and Sophie Bolt, General Secretary of CND, were all interviewed under caution this week.
Chris Nineham (StW) and Ben Jamal, Director of PSC have been charged under the Public Order Act and are awaiting trial.
The police hope that through a duel process of intimidating the movement’s leaders and imposing large restriction zones London marches will become confined to ever smaller areas and routes, especially on Saturdays, when it is becoming almost impossible to march through the centre of the city.
Heavily lobbied by Israeli zionists, including the Chief Rabbi, organisers have been told that protesters cannot march in the vicinity of a synagogue on Saturdays, regardless than there has been no reported incidents of intimidation at synagogues or indeed of Jewish people on the marches, and regardless that thousands of marchers themselves are Jewish. When the march organisers requested to also meet with Mark Rowley, the head of the Met Police, they were met with silence.
The police have even suggested we stop marching altogether, saying the marches have been going on too long. No acknowledgement that it’s the war on Gaza that has been going on for too long, or that it’s time for the genocide to stop.
Democratic governments are expected to facilitate demonstrations, whether they like it or not. Demonstrating is how our rights are won, and in this country we have a long and proud history of demonstrations. The right to protest is a fundamental part of living in a democracy. When opposition to government policy is significant, protest poses a challenge to the ruling elite, and the bigger the protest the bigger that challenge.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
