Wes Streeting is now responsible for the military treaty with a country he believes committed war crimes, reports Dania Akkad.
Wes Streeting, left, during his appointment on Monday as secretary of state for defence by Prime Minster Andy Burnham. (video still by UK Prime Minister
@10DowningStreeton on X)
By Dania Akkad
Declassified UK
Late last July, as a famine unfolded in Gaza and Israeli settler attacks intensified in the West Bank, Wes Streeting texted a friend shortly before midnight.
“Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes,” the then health secretary told Peter Mandelson over WhatsApp.
“Their government talks the languages of ethnic cleansing and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.”
In messages that Streeting released earlier this year, he went on to tell Peter Mandelson, then U.K. ambassador to the U.S., that Israel was exhibiting “rogue state behaviour” in the West Bank where it was pushing ahead with annexation.
“Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers,” he said.
A year later, Streeting, appointed this week as defence secretary in Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s cabinet, is now in a position to act — or at least, a better one than when, as health secretary, he says he was “hitting up against a brick wall” behind the scenes, demanding “moral urgency” in Gaza.
Relatives of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes gathering around the bodies taken from the morgue of Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir el-Balah, Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. (Ashraf Amra / UNRWA /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0 igo)
But will he? Less than 24 hours in, the question was already being asked.
Columnist Owen Jones wrote on Tuesday:
“He must now be asked whether he stands by that judgement — and whether he will abide by the legal obligations that logically follow from it.”
Green MP Ellie Chowns wrote to Streeting, demanding answers about how he planned “to end the U.K.’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza”.
“We now have a Secretary of State in the UK Government who has made public their view that the Israeli government has committed war crimes during the genocide in Gaza.”
The new Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has acknowledged that Israel is committing war crimes and that Britain has a moral and legal responsibility to respond.
Today, Ellie Chowns MP has written to him calling on the Government to match those words with action, by ending all… pic.twitter.com/DQIrmVC5hk
— The Green Party (@TheGreenParty) July 21, 2026
Zena Agha, interim director of the British Palestinian Committee, told Declassified that Streeting had “said the quiet part out loud” and now the question is what he will do about it.
“Will the doublespeak of the status quo require him to disavow what he knows to be true — as other ministers have before him?” Agha asked.
“Or will he respect international law and hold the perpetrators of war crimes to account?”
Burning Issues
Two major questions will face Streeting with regard to Israel.
—First is the U.K.-Israel military cooperation agreement and whether he plans to suspend it.
The agreement, signed in December 2020 without any publicity from the U.K. government, is said to incorporate a range of defence engagement activity between the two countries.
It has not been made public, with officials saying it is under wraps because it is being kept at a high level security classification.
But a Freedom of Information request showed that, as of last October, the agreement had been in place throughout the Gaza genocide without any modifications.
As the war on Gaza has continued, the agreement has come under sustained attack from MPs calling for it to be suspended. When asked about its status, ministers have repeatedly said the agreement is being reviewed, but as recently as April, it was “extant.”
Maximising our deterrence. Creating good jobs. Pushing the frontier of defence innovation.
All to make sure that if deterrence fails, we are ready to fight and win.
Programmes like @GCAP_int demonstrate how we are making that happen with our allies ???????? pic.twitter.com/jtylQNFZ8e
— Wes Streeting (@wesstreeting) July 21, 2026
—The second question is whether Streeting will release RAF surveillance footage captured over Gaza.
Since December 2023, the RAF and, more recently, an American company Sierra Nevada Corporation, contracted by the MoD, have flown hundreds of spy flights over the enclave.
Surveillance aircraft were operating above Gaza during the World Central Kitchen convoy attack in April 2024 that killed three British nationals.
Their families have repeatedly asked for the release of the footage, but the government has refused.
World Central Kitchen car after IDF strike, April 3, 2024. (Tasnim News Agency/ Wikimedia Commons /CC BY 4.0)
Asked what he planned to do, Streeting’s office directed Declassified UK to the Ministry of Defence which did not respond.
Despite his recent openness about his private positions on Israel, Streeting acknowledged in the WhatsApps to Mandelson that he has also “never been a shrinking violent [sic]” about the country.
“I’ve supported [Labour Friends of Israel] for over 20 years,” Streeting texted.
Agha called on Streeting, as an immediate first step, to release RAF footage after a massacre of 15 Palestinian aid workers in southern Gaza on March 23, 2025.
“This is just one case of blatant war crimes committed by Israeli forces – countless others that have yet to be told,” Agha said.
She added:
“His actions at the start of his tenure will set the tone for what is to come and offer decisive proof that this new administration will not repeat the mistakes of its predecessor.”
Dania Akkad is an investigative journalist. She has won awards for her reporting on women’s rights in the Middle East, Saudi Arabian dissidents and California’s lettuce industry. She started her career covering crime and agribusiness at daily newspapers in California, and then reported from Syria as a freelance journalist before the war, including investigating the 2005 suicide bombing in Amman that killed members of her family. She served most recently as senior investigations editor at Middle East Eye.
This article is from Declassified UK.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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