When she finally did make it here the other day – for official meetings with the government – an application was made for her arrest on war crimes charges. Now the law had been changed, she could come here with confidence that the arrest warrant would not be issued. Or could she?

It seemed last Autumn that the Liberal Democrats had caved in to Israeli pressure and joined the Tories and Labour. All three parties united to push the change to the law through Parliament in what has become Section 153 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act.  Yet, when an arrest warrant application was made for Livni, the District Judge examining the application suddenly had to stop work. An unprecedented and retroactive certificate that she was here on a “special mission” had been issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and he found his hands were tied.

We understand that the legality of the certificate may well be tested in the courts. Watch this space. But what actually happened?

It seems a little known compromise on the change to the law was reached between Nick Clegg and David Cameron. If the Tories (or Labour) had had an overall majority, the law would have been changed to require the consent of the Attorney General before an arrest warrant could be issued. The AG is a politician as well as a lawyer, and sits in the Cabinet. In reality, the consent would never have been given. But Nick made a difference – he insisted the consent should come from the Director of Public Prosecutions, not the AG.

Now, the DPP has to act independently – although he is under the “superintendence” of the AG and reports to him at least once a week. Hmm. A grey area if ever there was one.  How would it pan out when tested? Well, we now know some interesting things. When the application to arrest Livni reached the DPP, he did consult with the AG. We don’t know what they said to each other, but their conversation took place before the certificate was issued. This can only suggest that there was a risk that an arrest warrant would have been issued for Livni, despite the change in legislation, and that the Government needed to resort to very unusual steps to prevent it.

Will a similar certificate be issued next time an Israeli general, a colonel, or a bomber pilot against whom there are credible allegations decides to come here? If such an individual is prosecuted at the Old Bailey one day, and his victims get justice, they will owe it in part to Nick Clegg’s agreement with David Cameron. And what if Livni comes back for a lecture tour – perhaps to address the Zionist Federation or the Jewish National Fund? If she came here in such circumstances, would the Foreign Office still give her a certificate? I hope not.

Image: Creative Commons image from World Economic Forum.

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Gilad Shalit French identification papers by 'Gisors' used under Creative Commons licence

But now Shalit and 1,000 plus Palestinian prisoners, including women and minors, are returning home to their rejoicing families.  Never mind how the deal was done or why now.   Let’s hear the conventional pieties from the pro-Israeli media and Friends.  The terms of Shalit’s imprisonment ‘contravened international law’. Oh dear.

True, Shalit was held without visits from his family or the Red Cross. However, it is likely that any hint of his whereabouts would have led to a rescue attempt which would almost certainly have resulted in his death.

Shalit was valuable. It is unlikely he will have experienced the brutality of the some 700 Palestinian children who are arrested every year and prosecuted in Israeli courts. They too are kidnapped, seized in the middle of the night, with no reason given for their arrest. Most are blindfolded, painfully shackled, and physically assaulted until they sign confessions, frequently putting their name  to a Hebrew text they cannot read. They are not allowed access to lawyers.  Families are not told where their children are taken and cannot visit them.  Children as young as twelve appear in court wearing leg irons, a fact the Jerusalem Post refused to believe until they saw the evidence.

Shalit was in uniform and part of an illegal occupying force. Since the beginning of Israel’s occupation in 1967, 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population has been imprisoned. Illegal administrative detention has been widespread. At least 202 prisoners have died in Israeli jails due to torture, deprivation of health treatment and deliberate killing. Israel’s response to an election result they did not like in Gaza, was to kidnap and imprison 64 cabinet members and Parliamentarians from the Hamas political wing.

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In the past week, Israel has agreed a historic deal with Hamas to free Gilad Shalit, held captive in Gaza for five years, offering 1027 Palestinian prisoners in return.

The Israeli High Court received, and rejected, several petitions against the prisoner swap.

After years of refusing to talk to Hamas, and suggesting that there is no Palestinian partner for peace, the Israeli government has indeed, talked to Hamas.

Commentators suggest that this decision has come as part of Israel’s attempts to stay ‘ahead of the game’ regarding the Arab Spring.

Sheikh Raed Salah

A UK judge has ruled that the banned Islamic preacher and leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel who entered Britain illegally following a Home Office blunder is entitled to seek damages after being detained unlawfully.

Israel’s forced eviction of Bedouins in the Occupied West Bank

Btselem discusses how ‘The Civil Administration (CA) is planning to expel the Bedouin communities living in Area C in the West Bank, transferring some 27,000 persons from their homes. In the first phase, planned as early as January 2012, some 20 communities, comprising 2,300 persons, will be forcibly transferred to a site near the Abu Dis refuse dump, east of Jerusalem.’ Read the account in full here.

Has your MP signed EDM 2195 against this?

“That this House is appalled at proposals by the Israeli government to re-settle Bedouin people living in so-called unrecognised villages in the Negev Desert into larger recognised settlements; notes that this will affect tens of thousands of Bedouin, and is a policy more in keeping with historic American Indian reservations and South Africa in the apartheid era than what should happen in the 21st century; condemns the Israeli government for what is tantamount to ethnic cleansing and the destruction of the Bedouin way of life; and calls on the Government to seek the urgent support of other European Union countries for a concerted approach, also involving the United Nations, to stop Israel proceeding with its attack on Bedouin people under its control.”

Liam Fox, Adam Werrity, and – the UK pro-Israeli Lobby?

One of the many murky episodes concerning Liam Fox’s idea of transparent governance concerns the powerful lobby group, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom). For more details read the Guardian article here.

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The Guardian reports that the Palestinian leadership is to press for a vote as soon as possible on its demand for full statehood at the UN security council as President Mahmoud Abbas returned to Ramallah to declare before cheering crowds that the “Palestinian Spring” had begun.

• Perspectives on the UN General Assembly:

Jeremy Bowen suggests that Abbas has ‘scored some useful points at the UN’.

Orly Azoulay (Ynet) argues that Netanyahu has ‘won’, getting Obama to adopt the Israeli narrative, but ultimately Israel has ‘lost’ as America has resigned its lead role in the peace process.

• Perspectives on statehood:

CAABU, like LDFP, believes that the UK must back Palestinian statehood if it is to have any credibility.

“All over the Arab world, we have seen extraordinary scenes of people standing up against brutal regimes demanding their rights, their freedom, their dignity. Palestinians too demand their rights, their freedoms and their dignity, and that is what we should be recognising and supporting.”

The Economist argues that: “The principle is simple: the Palestinians deserve a state, just as the Israelis do.” And: “In truth, Israel will be safer when a proper Palestinian state has been consolidated. That is a point that too few Israelis and their American supporters appreciate.”

And for a more light-hearted take on proceedings…see Jon Stewart’s comments on the Daily Show.

• Final note

LDFP, as ever, remains committed to the two-state solution: a safe and stable Israel, and a viable and independent Palestine. After years of failed talks, and an Israeli PM who does not, at the moment, take negotiations seriously (and let us not forget what he thought of the Oslo accords), bringing the issue to the UN can be seen as a sensible step to achieve justice for Palestinians and their entitlements under international law.

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There are at least two compelling reasons for this.  First, there is the historical responsibility. In persuading the Arabs to join the Allied effort in the First World War in the fight against the Ottoman Turks and their German Allies, the British gave a clear signal to Sherif Hussein of Mecca that an independent Arab state would emerge from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, a vast Arab land to be ruled by his Hashemite dynasty. This was, as it turned out, a pipe-dream – worse than that, a con-trick.

Two obstacles stood in the way of that Arab Awakening, as it was so properly described by the great Arab historical writer George Antonius, in his 1938 book bearing that title. First, there was the so-called Balfour Declaration, based on a letter sent in November 1917 by the then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to a leading member of the UK’s Jewish community, Lord Rothschild, declaring that the British government looked favourably on the idea of the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, providing the rights of the resident non-Jewish population were safeguarded.

The second obstacle was the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, which proposed – with no reference to the populations concerned – how the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire should be divided up after the War. This is more or less what happened after 1918. France got hold of what is now Syria and Lebanon, while Britain had a mandate over Transjordan (now Jordan) and Palestine. The UK was still nominally in charge of Palestine when the foundations of the modern state of Israel were laid, leading to the unilateral declaration of independence by the Jewish State in 1948.

Though Britain was not the first country to recognise Israel, it did so relatively quickly, believing that the Jews who had suffered the unparalleled horrors of the Holocaust deserved a state of their own. Unfortunately, the process of creating Israel led to the expulsion – by force or through fear — of a large proportion of the resident Arab population, many of whom still live as refugees scattered around the Middle East and beyond.

Fast-forward six decades to the current situation, and what do we find? Israel has turned itself into a prosperous little state, through a mixture of hard work and massive public and private assistance from the United States. But for the past 44 years it has been occupying the West Bank – formerly part of Jordan – as well as the Golan Heights of Syria. Put aside the Golan for the moment, as it is the West Bank and its smaller ‘brother’, the Gaza Strip, which are meant to form the basis of a putative independent Palestinian state. Even the US President Barack Obama has recognised that the pre-1967 borders should be the basis for territorial agreement, though there will need to be some land swaps.

East Jerusalem is a critical issue, as it contains not only the third most holy sites for Muslims (after Mecca and Medina) but also it is seen by the Palestinians as the logical capital for a Palestinian state. Alas, the government of Binyamin Netanyahu – urged on by his hawkish Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman – is overseeing the judification of East Jerusalem, as more and more Muslims and Christians are squeezed out and new settlements for Jews are built. This is little short of ethnic cleansing.

Which brings me to the second reason why Britain should recognise Palestine when it comes to a vote in New York. This question is not just a matter of historical legacy but also of the current imperative for Britain to put itself clearly on the side of justice – to give the Palestinians not only the statehood but also the dignity that they have been denied, not just since 1967 or even 1948, but ever since the British government conned them into believing an end to Ottoman rule would mean freedom and self-government.

The UK’s Coalition government rightly threw its weight behind intervention in Libya, on the grounds that there was an international Responsibility to Protect the Libyan people. The time has now come to recognise the Responsibility to Protect the Palestinian people as well, not by military intervention but by backing the statehood claim and getting Israel to cease its heavy-handed and illegal occupation. Of course, not all Britain’s EU partners will agree. The EU High Representative, Catherine Ashton, who has been visiting Israel and Palestine on several occasions in recent months, knows she has an impossible task to put together a united EU front on the issue. Israel’s traditional supporters , including guilt-ridden Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, to name but three, are likely to vote ‘No’ or at best abstain. The United States is very likely to use its veto (not for the first time), but that is no reason for Britain to take other than the moral high-ground. If Israel justly claims the right to exist, so can Palestine.

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1. Chair – Mehdi Hasan (New Statesman)
2. John McHugo – Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine
3. Sir Menzies Campbell MP
4. Professor Illan Pappe (Exeter University)
5. Simon Hughes MP

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Successful application for membership in the UN requires both a 2/3 majority in the General Assembly (quite likely), but also approval from the Security Council – which may be more of a problem for the PA.

Update on recent news about statehood:

• China has announced its support for the Palestinian UN statehood bid.
• Spain also says it supports the Palestinian bid for statehood.
• El Salvador has recognised Palestine as a state, bringing the total number to about 120.
• The Iranian President says that Palestinian statehood is a ‘step forward’ before the ‘full liberation of Palestine’. The PA are not interested in the latter.
• The Guardian suggests that a Palestinian state could leave millions of refugees with no voice at the UN.
• Take a look at our legal briefing by LDFP Chairman John McHugo.

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Feedback: info@ldfp.eu.

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The Gaza Monologues is the work of 33 young Gaza residents who experienced the Israeli assault in 2008-2009. The project began by training a group of young people in the techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed, where a particular interaction between performers and audience is encouraged, in order to address the social reality of the ‘subject’ of the play. The actual writing only began after 4 months of intensive workshops. Many of the young people had experienced death and injury at close quarters, as well as the general trauma of the conflict, and the project had an explicitly therapeutic aim, as well as an artistic and educational one. A year and a half on, performances of the Monologues have been held in over 60 cities, with 1500 young people participating.

As the title suggests, the structure and staging of the piece is spare. In this performance, the dozen or so young people performed in Arabic, with English translation on a screen behind them. The only props were chairs. Everyone is onstage at all times, but – apart from the opening and closing scenes – each speaks alone. The first monologue is from a boy who watched his brother apparently walk away unharmed from a shell attack – only to be told when he got to school that he was dead. In some scenes, the ‘chorus’ of other performers move to complement the monologue – the boy who still cannot sleep at night is held and comforted in a huge embrace, which breaks up slowly as each performer moves away. One girl talks of her ambitions for the future – perhaps to be a politician! But then she remembers how politicians just turn up and deliver speeches, but nothing changes. The crowd around her claps blankly.

It’s a bleak and in many ways unsurprising insight into the experiences and perceptions of young people in Gaza. But the experience of watching this piece was for me entirely unlike my experience of those days in the winter of 2008-2009. Leaving the theatre, I expected to feel, as I did back then, a distanced and impotent rage, anguish and fear. Then, I knew of the pain, but did not know it – I was frustrated and didn’t know how to help. Here I felt alive, and I felt I was coming to understand the painstaking transformation – still ongoing – of totalising fear and pain into strength, movement and joy. There were some startling ambiguities; one girl, Hiba, talked of how the war had made her grown up, both in good and bad ways. She had to become her older sister, suddenly. And one result of this transformation was that now she was standing on the stage before me, speaking so clearly, her words, her gestures and her truth apparent. It is incredible that they all performed themselves with such grace and insight; testament to a great deal of hard work. And because they performed themselves, it went beyond what we expect from theatre.

The Israeli Army raid on the Freedom Theatre in Jenin this morning (27^th July) reminds us of the perceived danger that the Israeli government thinks that Palestinian cultural institutions and projects pose to it. They are probably right to fear these institutions. But my feeling is that they do not – and cannot – fully understand the threat. To see these witty, charismatic and self-possessed people who are surviving the Gaza war feels like a keen victory – a victory that can’t be measured by walls and borders, body counts and compromises. Violence doesn’t understand that victory.

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