Full list: Tories calling to end arms sales to Israel

The tragic news of the deaths of three British aid workers in Gaza, killed in an Israeli strike, has sobered the nation this week. It sparked a strongly-worded letter from Rishi Sunak to Israel’s Prime Minister on Tuesday evening, in which Sunak said he was ‘appalled’ by the killing of aid workers and the ‘intolerable’ situation in the Middle East. The PM also told Benjamin Netanyahu that ‘Israel’s rightful aim of defeating Hamas would not be achieved by allowing a humanitarian catastrophe’. 

Now, Conservative peers and MPs are publicly calling for the UK to halt arms sales to Israel. The list includes Tory peer Sir Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, who said that Britain should send a ‘message’ to Israel about the country’s action in Gaza, and Mark Logan MP, a parliamentary private secretary working in the Department for Work and Pensions.

Other Tory backbenchers calling for the UK to stop arming Israel include Clwyd West MP David Jones, who blasted the Israeli PM’s response to the British deaths — ‘I thought that [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s response – “these things happen in war” – was completely inadequate, frankly shamefully inadequate’ — and Meon Valley MP Flick Drummond, who said that arms sales to Israel should be stopped ‘for the foreseeable future’.