It seems Israel’s former foreign minister and now opposition leader Tzipi Livni would have been arrested on war crimes charges under a warrant issued in the British courts, had she gone ahead with a visit to London to address a meeting last Sunday. Her trip was canceled at the last minute.
Israel’s response has been one of absolute fury. It has demanded the UK change its laws to stop any such risk being run again by Israelis. A government spokesman yesterday described the issuing of the arrest warrant in a London magistrate’s court as “ridiculous” and an “abuse of the legal system.”
The effrontery of a state that continues an illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and in contravention of international law continues to build Jewish settlements in the occupied territories is quite breathtaking.
There was nothing wrong with the application. Britain, like any other country, has an obligation under international law to arrest any foreign citizen on its territory who is accused of war crimes, wherever committed. The warrant for Livni was issued at Westminster magistrates’ court following an application by lawyers acting for a group of Palestinians. They had cited Livni’s role in the failing Kadima government in unleashing the three-week assault on Gaza in which 1,400 Palestinians were slain. A UN investigation into the remorseless attack found that the Israelis, along with Palestinian fighters, who had fired rockets into Israel, had each committed war crimes. The hoped-for electoral pay back for Kadima at the subsequent elections did not work — the government was defeated. Meanwhile, Gaza had been laid waste and on top of the dead, thousands many of them women and children had been maimed.
Only serving members of a government and diplomats have immunity from arrest under war crimes legislation. Livni could therefore have been detained legitimately. A similar attempt in the UK to have a warrant issued for the arrest of Ehud Barak was rejected in October because he was a serving defense minister. Two previous attempts to arrest senior Israeli Army officers have been foiled when both were tipped off in advance. One had actually landed at Heathrow and stayed on the El Al aircraft until it flew him home.
The behavior of the British Foreign Office has been supine. It said it was looking urgently into the matter and was very concerned that if top Israelis risked arrest when they came to the UK, it would seriously damage the peace process. The short answer to that is: “What peace process?” Nor would any serving member of an Israeli administration involved in any negotiations be liable to be arrested, because of their immunity.
There has to be a strong suspicion that someone in Gordon Brown’s socialist government tipped off Livni about the warrant. The reason is clear, the last thing Brown needs in his final beleaguered months in power is an international war crimes wrangle with a former Israeli government minister in a British jail awaiting trial. Brown backed justice for Milosevic and Karadzic but not it seems for Livni.
