UK's response is deplorable

Earlier this month, the Israeli press reported that a judge in England had issued a warrant for the arrest of Israeli opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, who was scheduled to visit England, but cancelled her trip. The warrant was issued after lawyers for Palestinian victims of Israel's war on Gaza filed a petition, claiming that Livni, who supported the war, was responsible for war crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Israeli officials reacted with anger and formally protested. Israel's President Shimon Peres called the warrant a serious mistake. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it absurd and pledged never to allow Israeli officials to stand as defendants in foreign courts. He described the attempt to hold Israeli officials accountable for their actions in Gaza as part of the Goldstone campaign against Israel. The UN Goldstone report found that Israel had committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in Gaza.

This reaction is not surprising and was to be expected. What is surprising and indeed deplorable is how British officials reacted to an arrest warrant issued by an English judge, and how they responded to Israeli anger.

British Foreign Minister David Miliband telephoned his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman to apologise for the incident. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown reportedly telephoned Tzipi Livni and assured her that he was "completely opposed" to the warrant issued for her arrest by a London court and promised to change the law to make sure it does not happen again.

This is astonishing. The minister of foreign affairs and the prime minister of a country with great democratic institutions blatantly interfere with the independence of the judiciary. They even apologised for the action of a judge whose independence did not require him to ask whether the prime minister agreed with his decision or not.

They even promise to change the law to limit the independence of the judiciary in Britain by making the issuance of warrants of arrest of this nature subject to the approval of the Attorney General acting on the advice of the Director of Public Prosecution.

Public interest

These British officials justify their actions in the name of public interest. It could be argued, however, that there is a greater public interest in maintaining and defending the independence of the judiciary — one of the pillars of democracy.

It is clear that in issuing the warrant for the arrest of Livni, the judge must have found not that she was guilty, but that there was a case to be answered in the light of the evidence, including the recent UN Goldstone report that was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly. It was also in view of the fact that Livni's own country had refused to investigate the charges of war crime committed in Gaza as urged by Goldstone.

Since Palestinian victims of the Gaza war cannot find redress in Israel, they may seek it in the courts of other countries, relying on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which says that states party to the 1949 Geneva Convention have an obligation to extradite or prosecute suspected war criminals.

Israel itself relied on that principle to justify the kidnapping in Argentina in 1960 of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and his trial and conviction by an occupied Jerusalem court that sentenced him to death.

The principle of universal jurisdiction gained international notoriety when in 1998 a Spanish judge issued an arrest warrant for Chilean General Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested in London, but because of his deteriorating health was sent back to Chile which started its own prosecution against him.

But powerful countries, and Israel must be counted among them, are able to bring pressure to bear on the politicians to neutralise the principle of universal jurisdiction

Former US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld had threatened to move the Nato headquarters if Belgium did not change its law to stop attempts at using universal jurisdiction to prosecute US officials for war crimes in Iraq. Similar cases in France and Germany were dismissed.

A case against former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his role in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon in 1982 was similarly dismissed by a Belgian Court of Appeal after pressure was brought to bear on the Belgian government.

"Israel is a strategic partner and a close friend of the United Kingdom," Miliband said. But does being a strategic partner and a friend exempt Israeli leaders from criminal responsibility?

In thus joining the ranks of countries that capitulated to pressure and in blatantly espousing double standards of justice, the British government has shamefully done the victims gross injustice.

Adel Safty is Distinguished Professor Adjunct at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. His new book, Might Over Right, is endorsed by Noam Chomsky and published by Garnet in England.