The United Kingdom has warned the Israeli regime that it will expel 27 of its diplomats from London, together with their families, unless Tel Aviv reverses an order to shut the British Consulate General in occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), Israeli media have reported.
British Ambassador Simon Walters delivered the message to Israeli officials on Monday, according to the Ynet website.
London is prepared to remove one Israeli diplomat for each of the 27 British staff whose diplomatic status would be terminated if the mission is closed. The UK Foreign Office declined to comment on the report and did not deny it.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar ordered the consulate shut by Thursday, October 8, and revoked the credentials of its staff. The mission, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, operates separately from the British embassy in Tel Aviv and handles political and consular affairs for Palestinians in East al-Quds, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The closure is retaliation for Britain’s ban last month on imports of goods from illegal Israeli settlements.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced the measures alongside similar steps by France and Canada over the regime's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The ban followed Israeli plans to build more than a thousand new settler homes on occupied land. All such settlements are illegal under international law.
Sa’ar called the British decision “morally distorted” and accused the Labour government of hostility and interference ahead of the regime’s election later this month. His countermeasures also expelled British representatives from a Gaza coordination center, ended British training of Palestinian Authority security forces, and barred entry to 12 British figures, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Britain’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell visited the occupied territories last week in an unannounced attempt to keep the consulate open, sources told Reuters. The talks produced no agreement. A spokesperson for Sa’ar said the mission would close on Thursday as announced.
Former British attorney general Dominic Grieve has advised the Foreign Office that the regime has no legal right to close the consulate.
East al-Quds is recognized by the United Nations, and by Britain, as occupied Palestinian territory. Retaining the mission does not concede Israeli sovereignty over the city, whose final status remains subject to negotiation.
Grieve noted that the closure would fall mainly on Palestinians by disrupting consular services, aid oversight and reporting from the West Bank and Gaza.
An expulsion on this scale would severely impair the Israeli embassy in London, which has lacked an ambassador for more than a year. The clash marks a further breakdown in relations already strained by the regime’s settlement expansion and its war on Gaza.
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