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Liz Truss, the new
British prime minister, has come into office vowing to sweep away the
entrenched, outworn attitudes that persist in parts of what is otherwise an admirable
Civil Service. One area she is focused
on is the Treasury, which she regards as wholly out of sympathy with her
radical approach to tackling the severe economic problems that face the UK. Another sclerotic area she has in her sights
is the Foreign Office.
On September 22 the media outlet Politico reported a
Downing Street spokesman saying that, at the recent UN General Assembly meeting
in New York, Truss told her Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid, that she had
ordered a review of the current location of the British embassy.
This has not come out of
the blue. During the course of the
leadership contest in the summer, Truss told the Conservative Friends of Israel
(CFI) that, while recognizing the “importance and sensitivity” of the issue,
she would have the UK’s decision to stay put in Tel Aviv looked at again.
Shock, horror in the
hidebound Foreign Office and diplomatic circles generally. No less than ten former UK diplomats came
together to oppose the idea in classic British style – a letter to The Times. Preceded by a catalogue of stock
sitting-on-the-fence observations, the letter ended: “Two states is British
government policy; until that policy is realized, the embassy should stay put.”
In fact two states is
also US government policy, but that did not deter the Trump administration from
acknowledging reality and re-siting the US embassy in Israel’s capital
city. President Joe Biden has not
reversed that decision. nor does he seem minded to do so.
The UK’s foot-dragging on this issue stems from
its long-standing, and continuing, refusal actually to acknowledge that
Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, which it was from the moment of
the State’s foundation.
Global opinion is in a
terrible muddle about the status of Jerusalem.
In the original 1947 two-state Partition Plan for Palestine, Jerusalem
was designated to be a “corpus separatum under a special
international regime” administered by
the UN. The idea that Jerusalem could be separately governed under UN
supervision has long been abandoned. Yet
the UN as a whole, like the EU, still
clings to the idea that Jerusalem is somehow not part of the State of Israel. The UK goes along with this. As recently as 2016, British Foreign
Office briefing documents were still referring to Jerusalem as a corpus
separatum.
These days the UN and
the EU hold that “Jerusalem is a final status issue for which a
comprehensive, just and lasting solution must be achieved through negotiations
between the two parties.” In short, they hold that the exact status of
Jerusalem in international law is yet to be determined.
Yet the UN Security
Council, in its Resolution 2334 passed in 2016, seems to override this. It declares that the status of Jerusalem and
the West Bank is as it had been on 4 June 1967 – that is, on the day before the
Six Day War – referring three times to “Palestinian territories including East
Jerusalem.” Ignored is the fact that in 1967 they were not
Palestinian territories; they were territories that had been captured by the
Jordanian army in 1948 and illegally annexed by Jordan. The EU, echoing the UN position, officially refuses to “recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders,
including in Jerusalem, other than those agreed by both sides.”
So the UN and the EU
assert that Jerusalem is a final status issue to be determined through
negotiation, and in the same breath maintain that East Jerusalem is part of
Palestinian territories. They recognize no changes to the pre-Six
Day War boundaries (the EU calls them “borders”, which they never were), except
that they do not acknowledge that West Jerusalem was part of Israel at the
time.
Their position defies
logic. Either the status
of Jerusalem is still to be determined, or the part that used to be occupied by
Jordan is declared to be Palestinian and the issue is closed. Moreover if East Jerusalem is Palestinian,
then at least West Jerusalem is Israeli – a position acknowledged by both
the US and Russia, together with a clutch of other states, including the Czech
Republic and Ukraine. In December 2021,
that is before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen
Korniychuk, said his country recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s “one and only
capital.” His promise to open a branch of its embassy in the city in 2022
during a projected visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky is, obviously, on
hold.
The UK
position on Jerusalem is provided in a standard response by the British embassy
to public queries. Its first sentence
almost boasts that Britain has not shifted its views since April 1950. At that time, it says, the UK unreservedly recognized
the State of Israel de jure, “but it withheld recognition of
sovereignty over Jerusalem pending a final determination of its status. The UK
recognizes Israel’s de facto authority over West Jerusalem, but, in line
with UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) and subsequent
UNSC resolutions, regards East Jerusalem as under Israeli occupation.
“A final determination
of the status of Jerusalem should be sought as part of a negotiated settlement…It
must ensure Jerusalem is a shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states…
The UK disagrees with the United States' decision to move its embassy to
Jerusalem and recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status
agreement.”
Up till now the UK
response has concluded: “The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and
there are no plans to move it before, or in the absence of, such
a settlement.”
During the leadership contest, Truss declared war on outworn thinking in the Civil Service, declaring she was “prepared to break eggs” in taking on establishment orthodoxy. That final sentence in the British embassy’s standard response may one day need to be amended.
Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 6 October 2022:https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-718983
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