Netanyahu arrest warrant shows Keir Starmer’s Israel dilemma

LONDON — Will Benjamin Netanyahu be arrested if he sets foot in the U.K.? The British government can’t quite say.

The International Criminal Court warrant for the Israeli PM’s apprehension has thrown a fresh headache at Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer — and is just the latest example of the tightrope he’s walking on the Middle East.

When it came to office in a July landslide, Starmer’s government — which had faced pressure in the election from pro-Gaza independent candidates — swiftly dropped objections from his Tory predecessors to the ICC’s move. It banned some arms exports to Israel. And it restored funding to the UNRWA, the U.N. refugee agency heavily criticised by Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

Yet in his stance on those issues, some pro-Palestinian critics on the left of Labour say Starmer has only revealed the sharp limits of British influence over Israel.

At the same time, pro-Israel figures in the Labour tribe are concerned at what looks like wavering from a key ally at a time of pain.

“We’ve taken the wrong direction,” said Leslie Turnberg, a member of the House of Lords and the Labour Friends of Israel group. “I fear that the signals that have been given do not sound very helpful. I think they’re perverse.”

‘Proper process’

In its response to the ICC’s warrant, issued Thursday and already dividing Western governments, Starmer’s administration tried to walk a fine line.

The prime minister’s spokesperson said Thursday that the ICC is the “primary international institution for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes of international concern,” and confirmed Britain would “comply with its legal obligations.”

But there is, the spokesperson added, “no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy, and Hamas and Hezbollah, which are terrorist organizations.”

No. 10 Downing Street has stressed that it would be down to a domestic court to approve the warrant and then up to police to arrest Netanyahu if Britain is to comply with its international treaty obligations.

On Friday morning, Starmer’s top interior minister, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, refused to get into the details. Asked directly if the Israeli leader would be arrested if he set foot in Britain, the Home Secretary told Times Radio: “International criminal court investigations rarely become a matter for the British legal or law enforcement processes or for the British government.”

She added: “If they ever do, there are proper processes that need to be followed and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment in advance on any of those as home secretary.”

Starmer’s critics on the left already want him to go much further. Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who was booted out of the party and now sits as an independent MP, said ministers must “immediately endorse” the ICC’s decision as a “bare minimum.” He fired off a letter to the government Friday asking whether Starmer is “on the side of Israeli impunity or international law?”

Critical friend 

It’s a familiar challenge to Starmer, who has tried to keep a party which has sharply divided views on the war in Gaza on side — and see off the electoral threat of independent, pro-Palestinian election candidates. In the background, Labour remains deeply sensitive to accusations of antisemitism that came to the fore during Corbyn’s time as leader.

In its most notable Middle East move since Labour took office, 30 arms export licenses between the U.K. and Israel were suspended amid concerns such weapons could be used to break international humanitarian law in Gaza.

Though the U.K. supplies comparatively few arms when put against the United States, the decision had instant diplomatic consequences. Netanyahu went public to claim Britain had sent a “horrible message to Hamas” and “undermined” Israel’s security.

Some in the Labour tribe, who have longed for Britain to flex its muscles as a grinding war with a huge civilian toll continues in Gaza, were pleased with the change in tone from the top.

“There has been a good shift in the right direction,” said one Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “They have been able to demonstrate that shift: that actually the Conservative government’s position and … Labour’s positions are not the same.” 

In opposition, Starmer felt fury from his own side after slowly coming out in favor of an Israel-Gaza cease-fire. Just days after Oct. 7, Starmer enraged some Labour activists with an interview in which he said Israel “has the right” to withhold water and aid from Gaza.

“The starting position of the party was in the wrong place,” the Labour MP quoted above said. “Giving this particular Israeli government a blank check was the wrong thing to do, and we’ve seen how that has been abused.” 

Electoral threat

Labour’s stance on the war in Gaza also animated voters in July’s election. On an otherwise highly successful night, the party lost five seats to independent candidates who made support for the Palestinian people a bedrock of their campaign.

Among the high-profile defeats of the night was Jonathan Ashworth, who was being lined up for a Cabinet job by Starmer. Incoming Health Secretary Wes Streeting, facing a pro-Gaza challenge, clung on by fewer than 1,000 votes.

“There’s no doubt that there was a reaction,” said the Labour MP. “There are many people who did not like our position and it wasn’t just Muslims. I myself had that experience from non-Muslims telling me to get off their property.”

Richard Johnson, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said Labour is “aware that it has been perceived in opposition, at least, to be neglectful of the concerns of Muslim voters.”

“They have a desire to try and win back those seats and the countervailing influence of a pro-Israel position in the Labour Party is not nearly as strong as it once was,” he argued.

Four of the five seats — Blackburn, Dewsbury and Batley, Birmingham Perry Barr and Leicester South — that now have pro-Gaza independent candidates are in the top 20 U.K. constituencies with the highest proportion of Muslims, according to the 2021 census.

ICC is ‘extreme’

For their part, the opposition Conservatives have been quick to frame Labour’s policy changes as a cowardly response to election losses. Boris Johnson, the former Conservative prime minister, accused Labour of “abandoning Israel.”

On Thursday the Conservatives, who originally objected to the ICC’s move earlier this year, called on Labour to “condemn and challenge” a “deeply concerning and provocative” decision by the top court.

In the Labour tribe itself, the new government’s changing tone on Israel has fuelled disagreement from supporters of the country. Turnberg, of Labour Friends of Israel, said the ICC’s position on Netanyahu is “extreme and quite outside the balance of reasonableness.”

He said Labour’s “distasteful and unhelpful” policy shifts since the election could have been affected by the new caucus of pro-Gaza independent MPs, which includes Corbyn, and Labour’s hopes of neutralizing a further electoral threat.

For others, Starmer has still not gone far enough — and there could be pain to come on the issue at local elections. More than 100 Muslim Labour councilors wrote to Starmer last month calling for a complete halt in arms sales to Israel.

“Council elections will be used as regular referendums on the government,” Johnson, of Queen Mary University, predicts.

Some observers point to the couched, legalistic language the U.K. government has used to justify its Israel shifts so far — pointing to process rather than directly criticising Israel.

Christopher Phillips, an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank, said this is unsurprising given Starmer and his Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s backgrounds as lawyers. “They have repeatedly said they are supporters of maintaining and upholding the standards of international law,” he said.

But there’s a political convenience to it as well. “It allows them to take action that’s critical of Israel while simultaneously trying to limit the fallout and the diplomatic relationship with Israel,” Phillips said.

Matt Honeycombe-Foster contributed to this report