Deliveries of French military equipment have been continuing on the quiet. An investigation conducted by Disclose and Irish media outlet The Ditch has revealed that a cargo boat owned by Israeli company Zim is about to put in at Fos-sur-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône department) to load 19 pallets containing 14 tonnes of parts for machine gun rounds. The Contship Era is expected at 6am on 5 June. It is scheduled to leave on the same day around 11pm for the Italian cities of Genoa an Salerno. It will then make its way to the port of Haifa, in northern Israel.

The spare parts, called links, are made in Marseille by French company Eurolinks. The parts, which are used to link automatic weapon bullets, were ordred by Israel Military Industries (IMI). The company, which claims to be “the Israeli Defence Forces’ exclusive supplier”, has been supplying the Israeli armed forces with small and large-calibre bullets.

Our investigation has revealed that this is the third such consignment between Fos-sur-Mer and Haifa since early 2025, despite calls from UN experts for arms deliveries to Israel to stop because of the risk of genocide against Palestinians in a conflict that has killed more than 50,000 people, including 15,000 children according to UNICEF. On the first occasion, on 3 April this year, the Contship Era cargo ship collected 26 pallets, i.e. close to 20 tonnes of goods, meant for IMI, according to confidential maritime data seen by Disclose and The Ditch. The second occasion was on 22 May, when the cargo boat loaded two million links – one million M9 links, used for heavy weapons, and one million M27 links. The latter, meant for light automatic guns, are believed to be compatible with the Negev 5. The machine gun has been used in Gaza by the Israeli armed forces, including during the Flour Massacre, on 29 February 2024, when more than 100 Palestinian civilians were killed near a humanitarian aid convoy. The CEO of Eurolinks, Jean-Luc Bonelli, did not answer Disclose’s repeated requests for comment.

The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) representing dockworkers at Fos-sur-Mer announced in a communique a few hours after this investigation was published that “the container of links made by Eurolinks (…) has been set aside” and that they will “not load it onto the ship bound for Haifa”. The document points out that “Gulf of Fos dockworkers and port employees will not participate in the ongoing genocide masterminded by the Israeli government”.

Contracts between Israel’s IMI and France’s Eurolinks are nothing new. In October 2023, with the government’s authorisation, the French company exported to Israel 100,000 links made in its Marseille factory, as revealed by Disclose and Marsactu in March 2024. The following day, Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu stated at a news conference that the consignments were meant to be “re-exported” to some of Israel’s clients. At the time, Jean-Luc Bonelli said the same to Disclose: “The [export] licences granted to us by the [French] authorities mean that IMI can only use our links for rounds meant for their foreign clients”. However, the manufacturer acknowledged that the French embassy in Tel Aviv had not checked the identity of the end user.

Eight months later, the French armed forces minister changed his tune at a Senate hearing. He said that the links made by Eurolinks were “put together in Israel” then… shipped back to France. “Therefore, no weapons are sold to Israel,” he concluded. What explanation does he give now? The Armed Forces Ministry did not respond to Disclose’s request for comment.

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This article was update at 3.45pm on 4 June to include the statement from the Fos-sur-Mer CGT dockworkers announcing they would not load the goods onto the Contship Era.

Investigation: Ariane Lavrilleux with The Ditch
Editor-in-Chief: Mathias Destal
Editing: Pierre Leibovici
Translation from French: Béatrice Murail

Composite image: Éric Dellfos