Revealing of secret trips of Senior UK military figures to Israel

According to the outlet, Declassified UK, which cited the British government’s records of senior Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials’ business expenses, hospitality and meetings for the entirety of 2024, a number of those officials conducted at least five such secret visits to Israel in the months following Hamas’s attacks into Israel and Tel Aviv’s launching of its offensive on the Gaza Strip.

The trips reportedly include that of the UK’s Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, who had visited Israel on 21 January 2024 and met with his Israeli counterpart, Herzi Halevi “to discuss future operations in the region”.

General Charles Stickland, the Chief of Joint Operations at the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters – responsible "for the command and integration of UK global operations" – also visited Israel on 18 March 2024, under what the British government simply referred to in documents as "MoD Directed attendance at meetings to be held in Tel Aviv". That same day, the MoD’s Director-General for Security Policy, Paul Wyatt, was also visiting Israel.

Other senior UK defence figures who have made the unpublicised trips to Israel include the head of the UK’s Strategic Command, James Hockenhull.

The head of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Air Chief Marshal, Sir Richard Knighton, also made a visit on 9 January 2024 for undeclared purposes. Although the topic of that trip remains unspecified, the RAF’s operations in the Middle East have since dramatically increased, with the Air Force conducting hundreds of flights over the Gaza Strip to gather intelligence to share with Israeli Occupation forces.