The Electronic Intifada 23 September 2025
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer emerging from 10 Downing Street on 22 September 2025. Despite recognizing a state of Palestine, the British government has made no effort to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.
London News PicturesIn January, an Israeli soldier fled Brazil with the help of the Israeli embassy, to evade arrest after a Brazilian judge ordered police to detain him on a criminal complaint brought by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF).
The complaint accused the soldier of “participating in massive demolitions of civilian homes in Gaza during a systematic campaign of destruction.”
In July, Belgium became the first European country to act upon a complaint filed by the HRF – which was set up specifically to pursue legal accountability for war crimes committed in Gaza – as well as the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN).
The Belgian public prosecutor’s office instructed the Belgian police to identify, arrest and interrogate two Israeli soldiers as they attended the Tomorrowland Festival near Antwerp. The soldiers were released after interrogation, but the Belgian Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that it would “refer the files to the International Criminal Court (ICC).”
HRF has filed similar arrest requests in 23 countries.
In Bogota, Colombia, meanwhile, 12 countries signed a declaration in July at the behest of the The Hague Group that, among other measures, included support for universal jurisdiction mandates, a legal principle that allows individual states to prosecute war criminals no matter where the crimes were committed.
In response to such moves, the Israeli military has been forced to advise several of its soldiers not to travel for fear of arrest when abroad. Israeli media have even published a guide for Israelis on how to avoid arrest when holidaying abroad.
Livni and the UK
That guide is of little use should suspected Israeli war criminals travel to the UK, which has so far, and despite this week’s announcement that the UK would formally recognize a state of Palestine, made no moves to hold Israeli officials or soldiers accountable.
A precedent of sorts for granting Israeli officials impunity has a long history. In 2009, lawyers for Palestinian victims of the 2008-09 Israeli military assault on Gaza successfully requested a British court to issue an arrest warrant for former Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who was due to visit the UK and give a talk to the Jewish National Fund.
Livni was a member of Israel’s war cabinet during “Operation Cast Lead,” a 3-week offensive in Gaza that killed 1,400 Palestinians, including 333 children.
On being notified of the warrant, Livni canceled her trip to the UK.
The incident caused anger in Israel and embarrassment in London where then-prime minister Gordon Brown called Livni to apologize. Brown, even as prime minister, was a member of Labour Friends of Israel and was described by the Jewish Chronicle as “raised with an ethos that seems distant and quaint now, that of devout Christian Zionism.”
In response to the arrest warrant, David Miliband, Brown’s foreign secretary, said he would change the law to prevent human rights organizations, lawyers and NGOs from obtaining arrest warrants for Israeli war criminals from UK courts, limiting the implementation of universal jurisdiction.
The eventual change – which came in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government that succeeded Brown’s Labour government – meant that rather than a court being able to issue an arrest warrant directly, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) would now have to give consent before any warrant under universal jurisdiction could be issued.
The government claimed this would “ensure that the system is no longer open to abuse by people seeking warrants for grave crimes on the basis of scant evidence to make a political statement or to cause embarrassment.” In addition to undermining the efforts of British courts, however, the explanation was disingenuous: The courts only ever grant warrants for arrest under universal jurisdiction when sufficient evidence is presented to suggest that the crimes alleged have been committed.
Thus, when Livni came to the UK in 2011, and lawyers and human rights groups again requested a warrant for her arrest, this time, they had to wait for the DPP to give his consent.
The DPP was Keir Starmer.
Special immunity
DPP Starmer, now UK prime minister, mulled over the request for several days, before the foreign office retrospectively granted Tzipi Livni “special mission” immunity, meaning she could not be arrested in the UK. Starmer – a man who as leader of the British opposition in 2023 suggested Israel had the right to deny food, water and electricity to the civilian population in Gaza – was off the hook.
This was then a rare time “special mission” immunity was used in the UK to block an arrest under universal jurisdiction. It is intended to cover short-term official visits by foreign officials invited by the UK government who do not otherwise qualify for diplomatic immunity.
However, this immunity was never intended to provide a blanket shield for serious international crimes such as genocide, as jus cogens norms represent the highest form of customary international law.
Jus cogens (Latin for “compelling law”) refers to fundamental principles that are universally accepted as norms from which no derogation is permitted. It includes – as the ICJ confirmed in a 2006 hearing on human rights breaches in fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda – genocide and other “massive, serious and flagrant” human rights violations.
Despite these clear limits, the UK government has since repeatedly deployed “special mission” immunity to protect Israeli ministers accused of war crimes, allowing them to escape accountability while on British soil.
Most recently, this included the head of the Israeli military’s “Operations Directorate,” General Oded Basyuk in February, and the Israeli chief of staff Herzi Halevi in December last year. Both men have been central figures in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Core international crimes are not only crimes in international law but have also been incorporated into UK domestic law by the International Criminal Court Act 2001 (ICC Act), meaning that domestic courts can prosecute war crimes and genocide under UK law.
However, the ICC Act does not allow any proceedings unless the UK’s attorney general gives consent.
To date, the ICC Act has only been used to prosecute British soldiers. In 2005, then-Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, who has also done legal work for Israel, among other countries, announced charges against British military personnel for “inhuman treatment” of detainees, a war crime under the ICC Act.
Corporal Donald Payne was convicted after he pleaded guilty to mistreating Iraqi civilians at a detention centre in Basra, including hotel worker Baha Mousa, who died of extensive injuries at the hands of British soldiers.
Payne, the only soldier to be punished, was jailed for 12 months and dismissed from the army.
Substantial evidence
Despite the substantial evidence of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes, much of which they have recorded themselves, the attorney general has refused to consent to any prosecutions of Israeli soldiers under the ICC Act.
The current UK attorney general is Baron Richard Hermer. Hermer, a friend of Starmer, was appointed by the prime minister and nominated for a life peerage in the House of Lords, Britain’s upper house of parliament, specifically so he could take up the post.
Hermer has direct connections to Israel through personal and familial ties. In July 2023, he confirmed to the Jewish Chronicle that he has “dear family members currently serving in the IDF.”
Last July, he traveled to Israel to meet with Israeli officials and warn them that the UK’s stance on weapons exports to Israel was about to change. Nevertheless, when he returned to the UK, he declined to suspend weapons export licenses to Israel, asserting that he first needed to determine which weapons were “offensive” as opposed to “defensive.”
Ultimately, Starmer’s government imposed a partial arms sales ban, despite its own legal obligations.
Thus, while other countries are moving in the direction of applying universal jurisdiction to suspected Israeli war criminals, the UK continues to shield Israeli military personnel and officials from prosecution for the most heinous international war crimes.
This includes the UK government’s latest statement that it had “not concluded” Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This came just a week before a UN commission confirmed that Israel has indeed committed genocide in Gaza.
It is remarkable that while the UK has prosecuted its own soldiers for war crimes, it persistently refuses to hold Israeli soldiers accountable. Israeli soldiers, consequently, are granted protections and privileges far beyond those afforded to British citizens, rendering the UK and its people subservient and inferior to Israel.
In doing so, the UK government is abandoning both justice and sovereignty.
Ayesha Khan is a lawyer based in the UK.
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