Ministers shirked their responsibility for the Gaza bombings yesterday despite new figures showed a whopping £7 million has been made from military licences to Israel.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (Caat) organisers condemned Vince Cable’s Business Department for putting off an embargo on military deals with Israel.

Official government data has revealed that £7m worth of arms licences were sold to the Israeli army in the months leading up to the recent assault on the Gaza Strip.

A government spokeswoman insisted that licences issued by the British government were not linked to military equipment used during Operation Protective Edge, which bombarded Gazan towns and cities for almost eight weeks.

She said: “To ensure that new information is taken into account, and in light of the fact that a ceasefire has been in place for more than two months, ministers decided earlier this month to carry out a further review of extant licences for Israel — the results will be published in due course.

“The government takes its arms export responsibilities very seriously and aims to operate one of the most robust and transparent arms export control regimes in the world.”

But Caat believes the government have been procrastinating in order to avoid taking a position that could upset its relationship with Tel Aviv.

Caat spokesman Andrew Smith said: “The government is forever telling us that it has a rigorous arms export system, but the facts tell a very different story.

“The arms export control system is broken, and unfortunately these licences to Israel are only one part of an even bigger problem, which has seen the UK selling £60m worth of weapons to countries on its own ‘countries of concern’ list.”

Israel is one of the 27 countries listed on the government’s “countries of concern” Human Rights and Democracy Report.

According to Caat, Britain sold weapons to 18 of those countries last year.

This Sunday will see East London Against Arms Fairs musicians take to the ExCel exhibition centre in a musical protest against the hosting of next year’s DSEi arms fair.