British MP: UK has no plans to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem

London (QNN)- British lawmaker Shailesh Vara confirmed on Monday that the United Kingdom does not intend to relocate its embassy in ‘Israel’ from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Jordan News Agency Petra reported.

Vara was leading a British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (BGIPU) delegation to Jordan, where they met members of the Jordanian Senate.

The Jordanian delegation was led by Senator Hani Mulki, who told the BGIPU that the Palestinian cause remains a central issue in the Arab world.

Mulki emphasized the importance of “bringing ‘Israel’ to the negotiating table to the efforts to achieve peace through a two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state based on the June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

In September, former British PM Liz Truss said that she was weighing the relocation of Britain’s Israel embassy in Tel Aviv to the occupied city of Jerusalem – a decision that would follow former US President Donald Trump’s provocative move.

Truss told Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid about the move during a meeting at the United Nations summit in New York City on September 21. She later announced that she had launched a review into the issue.

During her campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Truss told the London-based Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) lobby group that she would review the UK’s decision to remain in Tel Aviv if she became the British leader.

“I understand the importance and sensitivity of the location of the British Embassy in Israel. I’ve had many conversations with my good friend Prime Minister Yair Lapid on this topic,” she said.

However, the UK’s new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak scrapped these plans, abandoning the controversial decision set in motion by his predecessor. A Downing Street spokesperson told foreign journalists, earlier this month, in a press briefing that plans to shift the embassy to Jerusalem had been dropped.

The spokesperson said “there are no current plans to change the location of our embassy” when asked if the Tory leader’s administration was still pursuing a plan to transfer the embassy to Jerusalem.

Separately, a UK government spokesperson also told The New Arab that “there are no plans to move the UK embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv.”

In 2017, former US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. Embassy to the occupied Jerusalem in May 2018, prompting criticism from the Palestinians, most Muslim-majority countries, and many states in Europe, as they were concerned that it would undermine prospects for a two-state solution to the so-called “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The UK, like most countries, currently has its embassy in Tel Aviv because of the disputed status of Jerusalem. The UK prime minister at the time, Theresa May, criticized Trump’s move.

The United States, Honduras, Guatemala, and Kosovo are the only nations that have their embassies in occupied Jerusalem.