LONDON: Rights groups and NGOs are dragging the UK government to court on Tuesday accusing it of breaching international law by supplying fighter jet parts to Israel amid the war in Gaza.
Supported by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and others, the Palestinian rights association Al-Haq is seeking to stop the government’s export of UK-made components for Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.
Israel has used the American warplanes to devastating effect in Gaza and the West Bank, and the head of Amnesty UK said Britain had failed to uphold its “legal obligation... to prevent genocide” by allowing the export of key parts to Israel.
The plane’s refueling probe, laser targeting system, tires, rear fuselage, fan propulsion system and ejector seat are all made in Britain, according to Oxfam, and lawyers supporting Al-Haq’s case said the aircraft “could not keep flying without continuous supply of UK-made components.”
It is not clear when a decision could be made following the four-day hearing at London’s High Court, the latest stage in a long-running legal battle.
Lawyers for the Global Action Legal Network  have said they launched the case soon after Israel’s assault on Gaza was triggered by the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks.
Israel has repeatedly denied accusations of genocide.
The lawyers said the UK government had decided in December 2023 and April and May 2024 to continue arms sales to Israel, before in September 2024 then suspending licenses for weapons which were assessed as being for military use by the Israeli army in Gaza.
The new Labour government suspended around 30 licenses following a review of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law, but the partial ban did not cover British-made parts for the advanced F-35 stealth fighter jets.
A UK government spokesperson told AFP it was “not currently possible to suspend licensing of F-35 components for use by Israel without prejudicing the entire global F-35 program, due to its strategic role in NATO and wider implications for international peace and security.”
“Within a couple of months of coming to office, we suspended relevant licenses for the IDF that might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of International Humanitarian Law in Gaza,” they said.
The government insisted it had “acted in a manner consistent with our legal obligations” and was “committed to upholding our responsibilities under domestic and international law.”
But GLAN described the F-35 exemption as a “loophole” which allowed the components to reach Israel indirectly through a global pooling system.
Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe, a lawyer for GLAN, told a briefing last week the UK government had “expressly departed from its own domestic law in order to keep arming Israel,” with F-35s being used to drop “multi-ton bombs on the people of Gaza.”
Hamas’s 2023 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that at least 2,749 people have been killed since Israel ended a two-month ceasefire in mid-March, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,862.
“Under the Genocide Convention, the UK has a clear legal obligation to do everything within its power to prevent genocide,” said Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive.
“Yet the UK government continues to authorize the export of military equipment to Israel — despite all the evidence that genocide is being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza. This is a fundamental failure by the UK to fulfil its obligations.”
Al-Haq’s general director Shawan Jabarin said: “The United Kingdom is not a bystander. It’s complicit, and that complicity must be confronted, exposed and brought to account.”
 

WASHINGTON: Republicans in the US House of Representatives on Monday proposed killing the electric vehicle tax credit and repealing fuel efficiency rules designed to prod automakers into building more zero-emission vehicles as part of a broad-based tax reform bill.
The proposal, which is set for a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Tuesday, would repeal a $7,500 new-vehicle tax credit and a $4,000 used-vehicle credit on Dec. 31, although it would maintain the new-vehicle credit for an additional year for automakers that have not yet sold 200,000 EVs.
The president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association, Genevieve Cullen, criticized the proposal, saying that plans “to abandon US leadership in energy innovation by gutting federal investment in electrification are catastrophically short-sighted.”
The proposal, she said, would deliver “an enormous market advantage” to competitors like China and threaten US manufacturing and jobs.
The US Treasury in 2024 awarded more than $2 billion in point-of-sale rebates for EVs.
The proposal leaves in place a key battery production tax credit for automakers and battery makers, but a new provision would bar the credit for vehicles produced with components made by some Chinese companies or under a license agreement with Chinese firms.
The provision, which would take effect in 2027, could bar credits for cars powered by Chinese battery technology licensed by American companies such as Ford Motor or Tesla .
House Republicans also propose to kill a loan program that supports the manufacture of certain advanced technology vehicles. It would rescind any unobligated funding and rescind corporate average fuel economy standards and greenhouse gas emission rules for 2027 and beyond. That portion will be taken up by the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Among outstanding loans finalized in President Joe Biden’s last weeks in office are $9.63 billion to a joint venture of Ford Motor and South Korean battery maker SK On for construction of three battery manufacturing plants in Tennessee and Kentucky; $7.54 billion to a joint venture of Chrysler-parent Stellantis and Samsung SDI for two EV lithium-ion battery plants in Indiana; and $6.57 billion to Rivian for a plant in Georgia to begin building smaller, less expensive EVs in 2028.