FOA slams British PM potential move of UK’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem

London (QNN)- UK-based Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA) strongly condemned on Monday the British Prime Minister’s potential move of the UK’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem, saying such a step “would send a clear message of British support for the violation of international law.”

Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss recently said she is 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 of the move during a meeting at the United Nations summit in New York City on September 21.

An unnamed UK government spokeswoman said Truss informed Lapid “about her review of the current location of the British Embassy in Israel,” according to news reports.

During her campaign for the leadership of the British Conservative Party, Truss told the Conservative Friends of Israel 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.

In a statement issued on Monday, Friends of Al-Aqsa said it “condemns in the strongest possible terms Prime Minister Liz Truss’s proposed relocation of the British Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

“Israel is an apartheid state whose ongoing occupation of Palestinian land is a flagrant violation of international law,” the group added.

“As with the rest of occupied Palestine, Israel denies Palestinians in East Jerusalem basic human rights and inflicts a cruel system of oppression and domination in an attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their ancestral lands.”

A move of the British Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the group said, “would send a clear message of British support for the violation of international law.”

FOA stressed it “strongly opposes this move and will continue to defend the freedom of Palestinians.”

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 concerned that it would undermine prospects for a two-state solution to the so-called “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

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