A lawmaker from Northern Ireland named Jim Shannon stood up in the British House of Commons to tell his colleagues about a Hezbollah operative arrested in Cyprus with eight tons of fertilizer meant for bombs and a forged British passport. He was speaking in favor of a government order to outlaw Hezbollah in its entirety. Until then, Britain had banned only what it called the group’s military wing. It was the evening of February 26, 2019, and nobody in the chamber mentioned that it was actually operating in London.
Nobody could. Three and a half years earlier, on September 30, 2015, MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, and the London police had searched five properties in the northwest of the city and removed more than 20,000 first-aid kits. The cold packs were filled with ammonium nitrate, about three and a half tons of it, the same compound that leveled the port of Beirut in 2020. A man in his 40s was arrested and later released without charge. The prime minister, David Cameron, and his home secretary, Theresa May, were told. Parliament was not.
Sajid Javid, the interior minister by 2019, closed the debate by giving his reasons for the ban. “First, there is secret intelligence,” he said. “I cannot go into the details of current intelligence.” He added that his defense secretary, Ben Wallace, had briefed the opposition’s counterpart that afternoon on the understanding that nothing would be repeated. The official record does not say what the parties shared.
UK sanctions on Israel may carry costs London has not publicly counted
Ten weeks later, The Daily Telegraph, a British national newspaper, published the story. It attributed the tip that started MI5’s investigation to “a foreign government.” The next day, a senior Israeli official told Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan, that the government was Israel and the service was the Mossad. London police confirmed the raids and the single arrest and added: “No other arrests were made in connection with the investigation, which is now closed.”
Wallace’s public response ran to one sentence: “Necessarily, their efforts and success will often go unseen.”
Members of Parliament can submit formal written questions that ministers are obliged to answer. Tulip Siddiq, who represents a district in northwest London, submitted two on June 10, 2019. The first asked whether the stockpile had been considered when the government decided to ban Hezbollah in full. The second asked when ministers and officials had been informed, and what had been done to protect the people living near the properties. Wallace answered both on June 14. To the first: “We do not comment on intelligence matters.” To the second: “It is the policy of successive governments not to comment on police operational or intelligence matters.”
That is where the public record stopped for six years.
In July 2025, the Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary body that oversees Britain’s spy agencies, published a report on Iran. On page 59, there is a box headed “Operation CARAWAY: disruption of Lebanese Hizbollah attack planning.” It gives the figures above and records MI5’s assessment that the material was stockpiled as contingency for an attack that Iran or Hezbollah might one day authorize. The box ends in a black bar of redacted text. The committee does not say who told MI5 where to look. A foreign partner is the sort of thing it redacts.
A price on disagreement
Britain is now putting a price on its disagreement with Israel. On Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced Britain’s move to ban trade in goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank as part of his promised reset of relations with Israel. The measures also extend to some services connected to settlements, including financing and advertising. The announcement follows Israel’s approval last month of construction in E1, between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim.
The argument may soon move beyond trade. On Monday, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, called on Britain to progressively suspend intelligence cooperation with Israel as well. That would take the dispute into a part of the relationship that British governments rarely describe in public. Britain, however, wants that part left intact. Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said on Tuesday that Israel remains “an important security ally” and that the links between the two countries “are important and valuable and will continue to be so.”
The London trove shows why. In 2015, somebody told MI5 where to look. British officers found three and a half tons of ammonium nitrate that the security service later assessed had been stored by Hezbollah as a contingency for a future attack. Cameron knew. May knew. Parliament did not. Four years later, when Britain finally banned Hezbollah in full, Javid told MPs that one of the government’s reasons was “secret intelligence.” Six years after that, the Intelligence and Security Committee disclosed Operation CARAWAY. It still did not disclose the source of the intelligence.
Britain is entitled to its disagreement with Israel over the West Bank, and Israel’s decision last month to open construction in E1, the corridor between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, gave it a reason to act.
Whether the sanctions are justified is a separate argument.
This one is about a country reclassifying a relationship whose contents it has never described to its own public.
The London cache is the best documented case. It is not the only one.
In 2017, Israeli operators penetrated an ISIS cell in Syria and found it building explosives disguised as laptop batteries; the United States banned laptops from aircraft cabins on certain routes, and Britain followed within days. Israeli-made Hermes 450 drones flew reconnaissance for the British Army in Afghanistan from 2007, logging 70,000 hours by 2013, much of it searching for roadside bombs ahead of British patrols. British and Israeli services are working together this year against Iranian operations aimed at Jews and dissidents on British soil.
Each of those served Israel’s interests as well. None was mentioned when Parliament debated Hezbollah. This time, the intelligence relationship has entered the argument. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch wrote on Tuesday that “British citizens are alive today thanks to Israeli intelligence.” Shadow home secretary Chris Philp warned that Britain relies on Israel for vital intelligence about terrorist threats.
Some of what Britain has from Israel is not owed but granted. Britain holds one of the largest foreign delegations at the American-led center in Kiryat Gat, in southern Israel, that coordinates the Gaza ceasefire and aid, and a British officer serves as deputy to the American general in command. Britain expects a role in Gaza’s reconstruction. Its diplomats move across territory Israel controls. All of that can be reviewed. Israel has already removed Spanish and Dutch personnel from Kiryat Gat after their governments took measures of their own.
Jerusalem’s response intensified on Tuesday. President Isaac Herzog called the British move a “grave miscalculation” and “gross interference” in Israel’s election. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the British ambassador to be expelled. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, repeated his warning: “If Britain acts against Israel, Israel will act against Britain.”
The same threat was made when Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of Britain’s Labour Party, was close to power, and again last year when Britain recognized a Palestinian state. It was not carried out either time because Britain belongs to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance alongside the United States, and the traffic runs in both directions. A threat that is never executed teaches London that Israeli warnings can be ignored, which is a worse outcome than saying nothing.
If Britain chooses to redefine the relationship in these terms, Israel should reconsider the intelligence cooperation that has come with it. London has repeatedly chosen to accommodate, engage, and at times empower governments and movements hostile not only to Israel, but to Britain and the West itself, while taking an increasingly punitive approach toward the Middle East’s only Western democracy.
A strategic relationship has consequences in both directions. Britain cannot expect Israeli intelligence as an entitlement while treating Israel as an adversary. Let London decide whose intelligence it would rather rely on.