According to a political source in Jerusalem, British authorities promised Israel roughly a year and a half ago that the country would enact a law similar to a Belgian law, passed in the wake of the Belgian warrant issued for the arrest of then-prime minister Ariel Sharon.

The Belgian law transferred the authority to issue arrest warrants for foreign citizens on accusations of war crimes from the courts to the government.

Beckett promised the prime minister that she would take care of the issue.

Obviously while not giving immunity per se, this extraordinary change to the conventions of English law would mean considerable diplomatic pressure (read threats) could be used to avoid having their soldiers arrested. The British government has also already shown considerable willingness to facilitate the escape of those due to be arrested.

The demands go back to an incident in September 2005 when an Israeli general, Doron Almog, was due to speak at a synagogue to "raise funds for a charitable cause". The Guardian gives the sequence of events and more details of the allegations:

Despite the alleged offences occurring in the Gaza Strip, war crimes law means Britain has a duty to arrest and prosecute alleged suspects if they arrive in Britain. The warrant alleges Mr Almog committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip in 2002 when he ordered the destruction of 59 homes near Rafah, which Palestinians say was in revenge for the death of Israeli soldiers. The warrant was issued by senior district judge Timothy Workman after an application by lawyers acting for Mr Almog's alleged Palestinian victims. According to legal sources, before granting the warrant Mr Workman decided his court had jurisdiction for the offences; that diplomatic immunity did not apply; and there was evidence to support a prima facie case for war crimes.

If Mr Almog had been arrested he would have been bailed on condition that he did not leave Britain. The attorney general would have to have sanctioned any prosecution against him for war crimes.

Mr Almog was commanding officer of the Israeli defence forces' southern command from December 2000 to July 2003. British lawyers representing Palestinians who say they suffered as a result of Mr Almog's orders had presented their evidence to Scotland Yard detectives last month and they began investigating him.

A statement by the firm of lawyers bringing the case on behalf of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights gives some more of the timeline and further details of how Almog was able to evade arrest.

On 10th September 2005, following an application made by Hickman & Rose and PCHR on behalf of victims of alleged grave breaches in the Gaza Strip, a warrant was issued by Bow Street Magistrates' Court for the immediate arrest of Major General (reserve) Doron Almog. The matter was then placed in the hands of the anti-terrorist and war crimes unit of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). On 11th September, according to reports in Israel and the UK, Doron Almog evaded arrest at Heathrow airport by staying on the airplane that landed there that afternoon and returning to Israel on the same aircraft.

PCHR and Hickman & Rose have reason to believe that a number of leaks occurred which allowed Doron Almog to evade arrest and return to Israel hours after he had landed in the UK.  Media reports and independent reports received by Hickman and Rose and PCHR also indicate that senior Israeli diplomatic and military officials were provided with access to the El Al flight in order to warn Doron Almog that police were waiting to arrest him at Heathrow airport.  

The extraordinary facilities given to Israeli officials to access the place to warn Almog drew protests from MP Jeremy Corbin,

"This is no way for the police or an embassy to behave, though it remains unclear if the El Al airline had any involvement in protecting the General. It would seem to me that both the Israeli Embassy and the police have a lot to answer for. The behavior of the Israeli officials is unacceptable but sadly, doesn't surprise me overly, since they are in the business of supporting these policies which brought about the war crimes committed by the General in the first place. Israel won't act on such cases, which is precisely why a UK arrest warrant was issued."

Jeremy continued: "I don't know why it is that Israel seems to get different treatment from so many other countries when it comes to Human Rights, whether it be in press coverage or in international support. In my experience it is commonplace for officials to insist that Israel is a democracy, and take little notice of their flouting of international law, but such a title when allocated to Israel makes a mockery of the whole concept of democracy. It is time the European community admitted and took substantive action against Israel in relation to its wrongdoings. Aside from allegedly ordering the dropping of a one ton bomb on a Gaza residential area in 2003, resulting in the death of 15 people (including 9 children), he has been involved in the demolition of 59 Palestinian homes, contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention."

Of course any arrest and trial would have given Almog a chance to defend himself against the allegations. The Israeli apologist Melanie Phillips of course rallied to his defence in her diary and quoted him from the Guardian report.

`He said that neither he nor his country had any case to answer for the deaths of innocent Palestinians in their battle against militants. "As a soldier and a general I have never committed a crime. Many times I have saved Palestinian lives by risking my life and the lives of my soldiers," he said. The actions of the army in Gaza were to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel, he said.'

All points of which would form the basis of his own defence and which, if he he is as certain of his innocence as he asserts, one would have thought he would be only too keen to prove.

Ms Phillips however is outraged that those alleged to have committed war crimes should be arrested. It makes you wonder what her position on the Israeli "extraordinary rendition" of Adolf Eichmann would have been. She did however not miss the opportunity to expose a "self hating Jew".

The indictment had been filed by an Israeli lawyer living in Britain, Daniel Machover, who is working with a Palestinian pressure group. According to this article Machover is a fully paid-up member of the Israeli Israel-haters' club:

And later the siren call becomes a shrill scream of hatred against those who dare to champion human rights.

Britain's legal establishment with its power-crazed, anti-democratic mania for supra-national jurisdiction and its elevation of international and human rights law to the status of unchallengeable holy writ has created a hospitable judicial environment for any group with a grievance to criminalise acts of military self-defence if civilians get caught in the cross-fire. A judicial structure, in other words, that can now be used to emasculate the defence of the free world by empowering its enemies to hound and persecute those who are trying to mount that defence.

To cap this madness, Machover has now also called for the arrest of the Israel ambassador - for warning Alog that he was about to be arrested by the forces of a state that appears to have taken leave of its senses.

No doubt if Almog had torched a synagogue or two, he'd have been hailed as a heroic fighter for freedom.

With Friends like this, Israel will find its case harder to make.