Haaretz reports that Israeli officials across the board are up in arms over a London court's issuing of an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni for her role (as then Israeli Foreign Minister) in the IDF's devastation of Gaza a year ago. Vice-Premier Silvan Shalom has even had his own "I'm Spartacus" moment:
"We are all Tzipi Livni," he said. "The time has come for us to move from the defensive to the offensive. We must use real diplomacy here, to tell Britain, Spain and all those other states that we will not stand for this anymore."This, of course, is hardly the first time a British court has taken such action:
In 2005, a retired Israeli general, Doron Almog, returned to Israel immediately after landing in London because he was tipped off that British police planned to arrest him. The warrant against Almog - who oversaw the bombing of a Gaza home in which 14 people were killed - was later canceled.That a US court would do something like this is unthinkable. But if one were to do so, and make it stick, the repercussions in forcing Israel to do a serious re-appraisal of its policies might be significant.
Other Israeli leaders, including former military chief Moshe Ya'alon and ex-internal security chief Avi Dichter, have also canceled trips to Britain in recent years for the same reason.
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