Signing a petition for Netanyahu's arrest is not the way to hold Israel to account

Benjamin Netanyahu is not an especially agreeable man. As Israeli Prime Ministers go, he has done little of real benefit for either his country or the Palestinians. Indeed, his undoubted talents for encouraging settlement-building and cultivating diplomatic animosity have proved a destabilizing force, both for international politics and the state of Israel itself.

And now he’s here. Netanyahu arrives in the UK today for talks with David Cameron. On the agenda will be, amongst other things, the controversial Iran deal, how to combat Islamist extremism as well as the UK and Israel’s growing ties (trade between the two nations reached an all time high £4.5 billion in 2014). The visit has spurred much predictable outrage, which has resulted in an online petition to have him arrested for war crimes. The petition has now reached the 100,000 signatures technically required for the issue to be debated in parliament.

As far as the petition’s intent goes nothing will come of it. The UK government has already said that as a Prime Minister Netanyahu is “entitled to immunity, which includes inviolability and complete immunity from criminal jurisdiction.” I seriously doubt whether it will ever be debated either. Certainly, no date has been set for any parliamentary discussion (though that could always change if and when Jeremy Corbyn is elected leader of the Labour Party).

And I think this a good thing. If every world leader were to be put on trial because a petition garnered a certain amount of signatures the only person left in power would be the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Everyone’s got a gripe with somebody. This is not glib; it speaks to a deeper truth, however trite it may be: namely, that one man’s villain is invariably another man’s hero. The idea is utterly impractical and foolishly naïve.

Worse, it doesn’t advance the cause of peace, merely the agenda of one side against the other in a conflict where no one at the political level is innocent. If Netanyahu were to be indicted Israelis would scream, with justification, for the indictment of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and work downwards from there. Depopulating each side of the very people that, like it or not, are the only ones in a position to make peace would be to sacrifice whatever slim chances remain for any sort of a settlement.

And that ultimately is what matters the most. A settlement is the only thing that will stop the killing on both sides and offer the Palestinians what they deserve, and have deserved for over half a century: their own state. These goals must not be sacrificed in the name of gesture politics at its most egregious.

David Patrikarakos is author of Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State.

@dpatrikarakos