Human chain protest at UK's Royal Air Force base Akrotiri in Cyprus, September 29, 2024

Workers' Weekly reported in May on an article by Matt Kennard in Declassified which detailed that British spy planes had then recorded up to 1,000 hours of footage over Gaza in over 200 flights since December 3, 2023 [1]. All the British spy flights have taken off from RAF Akrotiri, the UK's sprawling air base on Cyprus.

More recently, a film Investigating War Crimes in Gaza, produced by the Investigative Unit (I-Unit) of Qatar-based news agency Al Jazeera was released on October 3, featuring reporting by Declassified UK about the Cyprus base.

Declassified UK is an independent news organisation that investigates "Britain's military and intelligence agencies, its most powerful corporations and its impact on human rights and the environment". It has done systematic work to uncover the use of the Cyprus Akrotiri base to conduct surveillance flights over Gaza, supply the weapons Israel is using to conduct its campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people, disrupt communications systems and more. Declassified UK's coverage provides more evidence of the direct involvement of Britain, the US and other countries in the commission of war crimes.

The "surveillance" flights over Gaza were supposedly undertaken to facilitate the rescue of Israeli captives. Around 100 flights have been reported since the Starmer Labour government took office in July 2024.

In the film Gaza, Matt Kennard of Declassified [2] argued that this aim to rescue captives "doesn't explain" the number of flights. There were "only two British hostages in Gaza ... There was up to 1,000 hours of [surveillance] footage by March."

The R1 Shadow planes that fly out of Akrotiri have offensive target acquisition capacity, Kennard points out. Kennard has carried out detailed investigation on the use of this airbase and demanded answers from British government and military officials.

Bill Van Esveld, the associate director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch, explains why this information is pertinent.

"If you continue to know and continue to supply weapons and targeting information, if you're supplying targeting information, despite knowing what the result is, and the result is a gross human rights violation, then you also get to complicity, ... So, you know, the deniability that you're deeply involved in what's going on in Gaza begins to evaporate," Van Esveld says.

"When you start acting in a conflict to a level that the people on the ground who are doing the fighting are using your information as they fight," you may become "a party to the conflict," he further elaborates.

Al Jazeera's I-Unit asked the British government about its surveillance flights. It reports receiving the following answer: "The UK is not a participant in the conflict between Israel and Hamas ... As a matter of principle, we only provide intelligence to our allies where we are satisfied that it will be used in accordance with International Humanitarian Law ... Only information related to hostage rescue is passed to the Israeli authorities."

"Our priority remains achieving a ceasefire in Gaza so hostages can be released, civilians protected and aid flood in," it added. [3]

Notes
1. "UK military has flown 200 spy missions over Gaza in support of Israel", Workers' Weekly,
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-24/ww24-10/ww24-10-03.htm
2. Matt Kennard is head of Investigations at Declassified UK. Matt is an investigative journalist and author. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. After receiving the Guardian's top student journalism prize, he went on to gain a masters at the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York, where he was a Stabile investigative fellow.
He then spent three years working as a staff writer for the Financial Times in London, New York, and Washington DC, covering, amongst other things, the Pentagon, the White House, Wall Street, and the City of London.
Matt has written extensively on the US military and its conduct during the War on Terror. His first book, Irregular Army, investigated the recruitment practices of the US military and exposed the carte blanche given to neo-Nazis, gang members and criminals to sign up and serve in the Middle East.
His second book, The Racket, is an exposé of the hidden instruments used by the US government to apply economic and military control across the world. His third book, Silent Coup, is an investigation of the secretive mechanisms through which transnational corporations run the world, and was released in 2023.
3. Al Jazeera's film can be viewed here:https://youtu.be/kPE6vbKix6A?feature=shared

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