A Palestinian girl struggles to obtain donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 9, 2025
ANSELM ELDERGILL draws attention to a legal case on Tuesday in which a human rights group is challenging the government’s decision to allow the sale of weapons used against Palestinians
A FOUR-DAY High Court hearing begins on Tuesday in which Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, is challenging the government’s decision to continue granting licences to sell F-35 fighter jet components and other weapons to Israel. Oxfam, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have intervened in the case.
Public statements by Israeli officials make it clear that F-35s are regularly used in military attacks on Gaza. The British government accepts there is a “clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international law.” It has also admitted that Israel is not committed to complying with international humanitarian law. However, it says that stopping the F-35 licences would “cause disruption to the global supply chain,” which will have a profound impact on international peace and security.
Al-Haq considers that this is an extraordinary position to take. According to its general director, “Gaza is destroyed, it is unliveable. Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and erased by weapons whose components are supplied to Israel by the British government, acting in full knowledge of the consequences.”
The Arms Trade Treaty of 2014 regulates the international trade in conventional arms. Authorising the export of weapons and related items is prohibited if a government knows that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 or attacks on civilian objects or protected civilians.
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.Keir Starmer wanted for Genocide and war crimes
Ward Nar (left) reacts as she speaks with the photographer after returning empty-handed from attempting to receive donated food for her family, including her husband Mohammed Zaharna (centre right) and their children, Sally (right) and Raed, at a communit
AID workers expressed strong criticism today of plans by a group of US security contractors, former military officers and humanitarian aid officials to take over the distribution of food and other supplies in Gaza in line with proposals drawn up by Israel.
The newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is reportedly attempting to implement a new aid distribution system that supplants the current arrangement run by the United Nations and other international aid agencies.
The UN and aid groups have rejected the Israeli authorities’ attempts to control aid distribution.
Israel has blocked food, fuel, medicine and all other supplies from entering Gaza for 10 weeks, worsening a humanitarian crisis affecting 2.3 million Palestinians, and said that it won’t allow aid back in until a system is in place that gives it control over distribution.
The 14-page proposal circulated this week among aid groups and UN officials lays out plans similar to ones Israel has been discussing privately with international aid groups for weeks. For the first time, the proposal reveals plans to create the foundation and names the people who would be in charge.
A UN official said last week that Israel’s plans would “weaponise aid” by placing restrictions on who is eligible to receive it.
Aid workers have also condemned the plans, which would centralise distribution at four hubs under the protection of private security contractors.
Norwegian Refugee Council communications adviser Shaina Low warned that by forcing the population to relocate around aid hubs, the system would “depopulate entire parts of Gaza” and could be used to potentially expel the population.
Tamara Alrifai, communications director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which has led the aid effort it Gaza, described the plan as setting “a very dangerous precedent” for countries to use “full siege as a tactic of war” to force the abandonment of “existing aid structures and the entire international system that exists and is recognised and start creating a new system.”
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
While Trump declared the truce agreement a US victory, Ansar Allah said that Washington contacted them in order to “avoid drowning in the mountains of Yemen”.
Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement reached a ceasefire deal with the United States on Wednesday, May 7, according to Oman, which mediated the negotiations.
The deal stipulates the halt of Ansar Allah’s attacks on US ships in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, and an end to US aggression on Yemen. However, it does not prevent the Yemeni movement from launching attacks on Israel.
“Following recent discussions and contacts conducted by the Sultanate of Oman with the United States and the relevant authorities in Sana’a, in the Republic of Yemen, with the aim of de-escalation, efforts have resulted in a ceasefire agreement between the two sides,” Omani Foreign Minister, Badr Albusaidi, wrote on X.
“In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping,” the minister added.
Peoples Dispatch spokes to a member of the Communist Party of Jordan, Dr. Emad Al-Hatabeh, to discuss the ceasefire, which he described as a “sudden development in the war in the Red Sea.”
Dr. Emad Al-Hatabeh indicated that “both the US and Oman didn’t comment on Ansar Allah’s missiles targeting Israel, especially that this agreement was reached shortly after a Yemeni missile reached Ben Gurion airport, near the occupied city of Lydda (also known as Lod).”
As per Al-Hatabeh’s analysis, “important questions about this agreement are left without answers. Taking into consideration the Omani role in the American – Iranian negotiations, is the ceasefire in the Red Sea part of the deal? Another question will arise from this assumption, did America give up some of Israel’s interests in order to reach an agreement with Iran? Where does this agreement leave Netanyahu’s government, especially after Ansar Allah’s spokesman told Reuters that the agreement doesn’t include Israel.”
Ansar Allah says the US contacted them seeking a truce
One day before Oman announced that the deal was sealed, US President Donald Trump alluded that a ceasefire agreement was about to be reached, claiming that Ansar Allah agreed to stop the fight with the US because they “capitulated”.
“They just don’t want to fight, and we will honor that and we will stop the bombings, and they have capitulated,” Trump said from the White House on Tuesday, May 6.
“They will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that’s what the purpose of what we were doing. So that’s just news. We just found out about that. So I think that’s very, very positive,” he added.
Although Trump bragged about the deal, presenting it as a US victory, analysts suggest that it was Ansar Allah that forced the world’s greatest military superpower to the negotiating table, after paralyzing US naval traffic off the Yemeni coast.
Ansar Allah’s chief negotiator, Mohammed Abdulsalam, confirmed during an interview with Almasirah TV channel, that the movement “did not make any request to the Americans to hold ceasefire talks”. Abdulsalam asserted that, on the contrary, the movement recently received US requests and messages seeking a truce, via the Sultanate of Oman.
The Yemeni official pointed out that US endeavors to reach a ceasefire with Ansar Allah were a great disappointment to Israel. “The Israelis have endured great disappointment after the stance of the US, which tried to walk away and avoid drowning in the mountains of Yemen,” he said.
However, Abdulsalam clarified that Ansar Allah is still “assessing this US position so that the facts on the ground do not contradict its statements”. He further warned that in the event that the US “would not abide by the agreement in any way”, the movement “will respond”.
Abdulsalam considered the deal “a success to be added to Yemen’s credit, as it enhances a situation that would leave the “usurper entity” [Israel] in a situation of loneliness, in confrontation with the great popular and military stance led by Yemen on behalf of the Arab and Islamic nation.”
The ceasefire was announced two months after Trump ordered a large-scale aerial campaign against Yemen on the pretext of protecting US shipping, air, and naval assets and to restore “navigation freedom” from Ansar Allah’s attacks. Trump’s order followed Ansar Allah’s decision to resume a ban on Israeli ships due to Israel’s continuous blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Yemen threatens Israel with a devastating and painful response for attacking Sana’a airport
While Ansar Allah agreed to a truce with the US, it vowed to escalate its operations against Israel as long as its blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza is not lifted.
In response to Israel’s aggression on Sana’a International Airport on Tuesday, that destroyed terminal buildings and caused USD 500 million in damage, Yemen’s Supreme Political Council Chairman, Mahdi al-Mashat, threatened that “Sanaa’s response will be devastating, painful, and beyond what the Israeli enemy can endure.”
“From this moment onward, stay in your shelters or leave for your homelands immediately. Your failed government will no longer be able to protect you,” Al-Mashat warned Israeli people.
Moreover, the Yemeni senior official reaffirmed that no aggression will deter Yemen from its “rightful decision” to support the people of Palestine “until the genocide ends and the siege on Gaza is lifted.”
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An RAF F-35. The research also raises questions over whether the UK continued to sell F-35 parts directly to Israel. Photograph: AS1 Amber Mayall RAF/PA
The research also raises questions over whether the UK continued to sell F-35 parts directly to Israel in breach of an undertaking only to sell them to the US manufacturers Lockheed Martin as a way of ensuring the fighter jet’s global supply chain was not disrupted, something the government said was essential for national security and Nato.
The findings have led the former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell to call for a full investigation, adding it was a resigning matter if the foreign secretary, David Lammy, was shown to have misled parliament in breach of the ministerial code when he told MPs in September that much of what the UK sends to Israel was “defensive in nature”.
McDonnell said “The government has shrouded its arms supplies to Israel in secrecy. They must finally come clean in response to this extremely concerning evidence and halt all British arms exports to Israel to ensure no British-made weapons are used in Netanyahu’s new and terrifying plans to annex the Gaza Strip and ethnically cleanse the land.”
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.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
Leeds May Day march. Photo: Neil Terry Photography
WORKERS rallied across Britain this weekend for May Day and International Workers’ Day in solidarity with all those in struggle for peace and justice, and in particular with their brothers and sisters in Palestine.
At Cardiff’s rally on Saturday — coinciding with World Press Freedom Day — the NUJ’s David Nicholson warned comrades that journalism was under attack at home and around the world, not least in Gaza and the West Bank.
“There were 1,000 journalists and media workers working in Gaza when Israel invaded in October 2023,” he said. “Almost 20 per cent have been killed by the Israeli military, with 171 dead and hundreds injured.
“This targeting of journalists is a war crime, and the NUJ and the International Federation of Journalists are building a case for the International Criminal Court.“
The Israeli government will not allow international journalists into Gaza — what have they got to hide,” he said.
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.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
A Palestinian girl struggles to obtain donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 9, 2025
