A PALESTINIAN human rights group announced today that it is appealing against a High Court ruling on Britain’s arms exports to Israel.

Al-Haq has been engaged in a long legal battle against the Department for Business and Trade, challenging the export of parts for lethal F-35 jets.

In July, the High Court rejected the challenge and ruled that it was for Parliament and not the court to decide whether the decision to continue the exports breached Britain’s international legal obligations.

Last September, the Labour government suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licences to Israel, but parts for F-35s, which Israel uses to drop 2,000lb bombs on innocent civilians, remained exempt.

Part of a global supply programme, the government claimed suspending them would “undermine US confidence in the UK and Nato.”

A hearing will now be held at the Court of Appeal on October 9.

Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin said: “If the UK courts are unwilling to hold the government accountable for arming Israel during the deadliest phase of its genocide to date, who will?

“The court’s findings set a dangerous precedent and risk undermining the legal mechanisms designed to ensure government accountability.”

Meanwhile, Private Eye magazine has reported that Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, is close to winning a £2 billion contract that would make it a “strategic partner” of the Ministry of Defence.

Elbit is reportedly bidding for the Army Collective Training Service contract, which would see the firm train up to 60,000 British soldiers a year.

The MoD said that the competition for the contract “remains ongoing.”

Direct action group Palestine Action frequently targeted and occupied Elbit weapons factories, before being proscribed last month.

Defend Our Juries, which co-ordinates protests supporting the group, said that Palestine Action’s proscription was proposed in March, shortly after Elbit submitted its bid for the contract in February.

A spokesperson said: “Today’s revelation that the government is on the verge of awarding the contract to Israel’s biggest arms provider, while at the same time proscribing the protest group that has done the most to stop the same company facilitating the genocide, exposes once again the depth of our government’s ongoing complicity in genocide, and exposes its condemnatory statements of the Israeli military operation as pure theatre.”