London, August 11 (RHC)-- People in Britain have been signing a petition that calls on the government to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon his arrival in the UK next month.
The petition entitled “Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes when he arrives in London” is available at a petitions website set up by the UK government and parliament.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law, he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014,” the petition reads.
More than 26,000 people had signed the petition until GMT 1100 on Monday with the number of signatures dramatically on the rise.
The British government is expected to respond to the demand as all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures should be seen into, according to law.
Rules governing the petition site also stipulate that any petition that receives in excess of 100,000 signatures must be considered by the UK parliament for debate. The deadline for signing the petition is on February 7, 2016.
Israel launched its latest onslaught against the besieged Gaza Strip in early July 2014. The offensive ended in late August 2014, with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israeli officials in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo.
Amnesty International said on November 5, 2014 that the Israeli military's killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians during its military aggression against the Gaza Strip amounts to “war crimes.”
"It appears that the attacks directly and deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects, which would constitute war crimes," the London-based rights group said in a new report on Wednesday, adding that eight cases had been examined, in which Israeli airstrikes targeted homes in Gaza “without warning.”
“Israeli forces have brazenly flouted the laws of war by carrying out a series of attacks on civilian homes, displaying callous indifference to the carnage caused,” said Philip Luther, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.
Over 2,200 Palestinians were killed and some 11,100 others wounded in Israel’s 50-day military aggression last summer.
