Since late 2023, the United Kingdom has flown over 500 surveillance missions over Gaza using RAF aircraft based in Cyprus. These flights, carried out by 14 Squadron from RAF Akrotiri, are officially described as “hostage location” efforts. But with no hostages ever located and no accountability for how the gathered intelligence is used, the reality is far more disturbing.

The intelligence from these spy flights is almost certainly being funneled into Israel’s military apparatus, which has already killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children. Surveillance data provided by Britain is enabling targeting. It is not neutral. It is not humanitarian. It is assistance to a military campaign widely recognized as disproportionate and possibly genocidal.

While the UK government insists the flights are limited in scope and legality, it offers no transparency. Parliament is barely informed. No public oversight exists. And yet the same aircraft keep flying, even during declared ceasefires, gathering and relaying information above a territory where Israel has reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble.

This isn’t support. It’s complicity. Britain is not merely arming Israel with weapons and licenses. It is actively participating in the destruction of Gaza through eyes in the sky.

No hostages have been freed thanks to these flights. No military accountability has been imposed on Israel for its actions. But the UK continues its operations, claiming moral high ground while assisting a campaign that United Nations experts have said may amount to genocide.

The British public deserves to know: their government is not a bystander. It is an enabler.