Over 46,000 Brits Sign Petition to Try Netanyahu for War Crimes

If the petition reaches 100,000 signatures, the issue must be debated in the U.K. parliament, according to the government website.

As of Thursday morning, over 46,000 Britons had signed a petition calling on their government to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes when he arrives in the U.K. next month.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law, he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the U.K., for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014,” reads the online petition, whose numbers are jumping by the minute.

The petition is referring to the war in Gaza last summer, which Israel calls Operation Protective Edge. The United Nations say it left thousands of Gazans homeless and displaced and local infrastructure in the besieged area in shambles.

The message was placed on petition.parliament.uk, a special petition website created by the U.K. government. According to the site, any petition that gets 10,000 signatures or more should be discussed by government, while any that receive 100,000 signatures or more must be considered for debate in the U.K. parliament.

However, according to the British Embassy in Israel, under British law, “foreign heads of state enjoy immunity from the legal process, and cannot be arrested or detained,” it told Israeli press.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry shrugged off the petition as a “PR exercise with no practical significance.”

It also downplayed the petition’s repercussions by focusing on the diplomatic relationship between the two nations.

“The bilateral relations between Britain and Israel are closer than ever, as evidenced by data on mutual trade which has doubled in recent years, along with fruitful academic, cultural and scientific bilateral cooperation," it said.