Home secretary Yvette Cooper has “overall responsibility for all Home Office business”. And part of the Home Office’s business is policing. Yet Cooper has shamefully sought to avoid saying whether the UK would comply with its obligations over arresting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu now that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued a warrant for his detention over his role in the genocide in Gaza.
Yvette Cooper: arresting Netanyahu ‘nothing to do with me’
Speaking to Sky News, she said:
Well, that’s not a matter for me as home secretary.
She added:
there are proper processes that need to be followed, and therefore it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on those.
The presenter duly followed up by asking:
the UK is a signatory of the International Criminal Court – don’t we have to respect its rulings?
Again failing to answer the question, Cooper simply stated:
we respect the independence of International Criminal Court… and we’ve always respected the importance of international law.
The Home Secretary — responsible for policing and arrests — claims here that it is not a matter for the … Home Secretary … as to whether Netanyahu would be arrested by British police. @YvetteCooperMP — shameful, cowardly, embarrassing.
— Philip Proudfoot 🇱🇧🇵🇸 (@PhilipProudfoot) November 22, 2024
And it was pretty clear that Cooper had received orders to deny responsibility and avoid confirming if the UK would arrest Netanyahu, because she gave the same response elsewhere:
Breaking: UK Home Secretary says its not her job whether the law is enforced. pic.twitter.com/WZIz3Pn3pX
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) November 22, 2024
Like Cooper, a government spokesperson simply said “we respect the independence of the International Criminal Court”, while failing to accept the ICC’s ruling.
Hypocrisy
Britain’s International Criminal Court Act, Middle East Eye explains, “legally obliges the government to arrest Netanyahu if he sets foot on UK soil”. It adds that “Britain’s independent courts” will make the final decision on endorsing Netanyahu’s arrest warrant “in accordance with the 2001 act”.
Prime minister Keir Starmer and foreign secretary David Lammy, who both trained as lawyers, know very well that it would be hard to wriggle out of Britain’s responsibility to arrest Netanyahu. But that doesn’t mean they can’t underplay the importance of the ICC ruling. And they’ve been doing this via both genocide denial and silence.
They both publicly welcomed previous ICC rulings regarding Vladimir Putin, for example, but have so far been silent about accepting the ICC ruling on Netanyahu.
The world is currently witnessing an existential crisis for US imperialism and its junior partners in Britain and Israel. There has been consistent condemnation of Israeli war crimes from the ICC, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), UN experts, the UN Security Council, the overwhelming majority of UN members, human rights organisations, doctors, and charities.
Yet the imperialist alliance has dug in. Washington keeps choosing to defend Israel’s genocidal warmongering at all costs. And by continuing to give Israel hundreds of billions of dollars in financial and military aid, it is participating in the genocide, and giving Israel impunity.
Keir Starmer’s government has a serious dilemma. Does it want to go down along with its senior imperialist partner? Or does it want to step back from the brink and join the overwhelming global consensus that this madness must stop?
Cooper saying arresting Netanyahu is nothing to do with her gives us an idea of what Labour’s position is.
Featured image via screengrab
