Israel is postponing "strategic dialogue" with Britain over defence and security issues, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman has said.

The move is a protest over attempts to use British law to prosecute visiting Israeli officials, the spokesman added.

The news comes on the first day of an official visit to Israel by the UK's Foreign Secretary William Hague.

The Foreign Office said the British government was moving to curb the use of "mischievous" arrest warrants.

Mr Hague will also be visiting the occupied territories during his visit.

An arrest warrant was issued through UK courts for Israeli former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in December last year. The warrant was granted by a London court at the request of Palestinian plaintiffs, provoking Israeli anger.

It was revoked when it was found Ms Livni was not visiting the UK.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman denied that the latest development was a deliberate "ambush" to humiliate Mr Hague.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11681989

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Meanwhile some lazy donkey pen-pusher is trying to make us believe in the same BBC article, column on the side:

Paul Danahar Middle East Bureau Chief

The timing of this announcement will have raised eyebrows on the British side, because the UK feels it is working hard to meet Israeli concerns over this issue.

Western diplomats are often frustrated by the way the Israeli foreign ministry works - it has a record of making statements which embarrass and frustrate Israel's allies and friends.

But diplomats say what is said and done by the Israeli Foreign Ministry is often at odds with the Israeli prime minister's position.

That reflects one of the anomalies of the very fragile coalition government in Israel.

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Have you ever hear of the bad cop good cop routine, you dorks?... I get irate when an obvious trick is presented by the "media" as fragility in the government of Israel. So what, even it was, which it definitely isn't, the Palestinians are owed their day in court in the UK and the Israeli ministers who have committed "war crimes" should be taken to court...

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Meanwhile:

Since the 1967 military occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, Israel has built in these occupied territories civilian colonies, or settlements, and encouraged Israeli citizens and industries to move into them. Presently there are 135 Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and dozens of additional “outposts” – settlements not yet officially recognized by the Israeli government. These house over 562,000 Jewish Israeli residents: 282,000 in the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem), 260,000 in neighborhoods built in Arab Jerusalem or annexed to Jerusalem, and 20,000 in the Golan Heights.

The Israeli civilian construction has been one of the methods in which occupied areas were effectively annexed, partially or in full, into Israel. The on-going construction includes housing developments as well as extensive infrastructure projects such as roads and water systems for the exclusive use of Israeli settlers, on lands confiscated from Palestinians or declared “state lands” in various ways. The Israeli colonizing efforts are illegal by international law that stipulates that an occupying power moving its citizens into an occupied area is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and any permanent changes made in the occupied land for such settlers is in violation of The Hague Regulations.

In this section of the database, we distinguish between three different forms of corporate involvement in the settlement industry: Israeli companies which are located in the settlements and thus use the resources of Palestinian land and labor in their production; Companies involved in sustaining the settlements and connecting them to Israel; Companies involved in real estate deals and the construction of Israeli infrastructure and settlements on occupied land.

http://www.whoprofits.org/Involvements.php?id=grp_inv_settlement.

http://www.wprmbritain.org/?p=1503

settlements

Gaza "the giant open prison" are not the words of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president. Nor were they scripted by Hamas' Khaled Mishaal or Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas. They belong to David Cameron, the young and charismatic British prime minister.

Since the imposition of the Gaza blockade nearly four years ago, no single European leader has voiced moral outrage over the sanctions with such alacrity, simplicity and forcefulness. His words have reverberated widely in Gaza as well as elsewhere in the Arab world.

Like Cameron's words, the untold misery shatters the international political society's quasi silence and questions the immorality of indifference and inaction towards the blockade.

Gazans need to reclaim their state of dignity and humanity before reclaiming the seemingly illusionary hope of a Palestinian state. A peek inside the 'big prison' reveals the blockade to be multi-layered - affecting economy, polity, diplomacy and security.

For most Arabs, that Israel imposes a de-humanising blockade may be easy to explain, but Egypt's role in the blockade defies logical explication. The music one hears from the Egyptian regime and other Arab states about adherence to international agreements convinces neither Arabs nor Westerners.

But abiding by sanctions that traumatise, de-humanise and isolate fellow Arabs, as in Iraq (where tens of thousands died as a result) or in Gaza is acceptable in the name of good citizenship in the international arena.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/11/20101138294106415.html

From Balfour to Obama
The dominant imperial power may have changed but treatment of the Palestinians remains much the same.

On November 2, 1917, Lord Arthur Balfour, the then British foreign secretary, promised to create a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Known as the Balfour Declaration, the document became the first stepping stone towards the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel.

Palestine was still under Ottoman rule when it was written. But Britain and its allies were making headway in defeating the ailing Ottoman empire and, when Palestine came under British control just a month later, the document suddenly assumed much greater significance. The Balfour Declaration was presented as equal to a land deed that conferred legitimacy on the plans of the international Zionist movement.

Balfour was keenly aware of the presence of an indigenous Arab population, but in an era that preceded international law, the United Nations charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention, a powerful empire had no qualms about granting a land deed for territories it had no legitimate claim to.

The Balfour Declaration did include a stipulation that "nothing shall be done that may prejudice the religious or civil rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" - a clause that was not exactly heeded by the founders and rulers of Israel. But little more could have been expected as the declaration itself stripped the Arab community in Palestine of its right to land and self-determination.

'Europe's problem'

But the Palestinian Arabs were the last thing on Balfour's mind, or the minds of many other British politicians. He was primarily concerned with solving 'a European problem' and not with addressing the rights of an indigenous people. He also sought to bolster a declining British empire.

Balfour saw the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine as the best solution to what was commonly referred to as Europe's 'Jewish problem' - a solution that reflected and embodied the central anti-Semitic belief that Jews were an alien body causing problems in Christian Europe.

Balfour was a known anti-Semite who as prime minister supported and pushed for the 1905 Aliens Act that sought to curb Eastern European, particularly Jewish, immigration to Britain.

Over the years, he grew convinced that Zionism - the movement that advocated the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine - offered a convenient solution to the 'Jewish problem'. Like other anti-Semites he did not believe that Jews belonged in Europe and felt that they comprised a separate race and religion that could not live in harmony within their countries of residence.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/2010/11/20101161186926470.html