Kuwaiti MP warns against moving UK’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem

London (QNN)- Member of the Kuwaiti parliament, Osama al-Shaheen, has urged British Prime Minister Liz Truss not to move the British embassy in ‘Israel’ from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In an interview with Middle East Eye (MEE), Shaheen, a prominent MP from the country’s biggest political bloc, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Constitutional Movement, warned that such a move could scupper the free trade agreement between the UK and the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (which includes Kuwait) due to be signed by the end of the year.

Truss said that 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 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.

Shaheen said Kuwait’s parliament could respond to the move by voting against the UK-GCC free trade agreement. “If an agreement is presented to us, we must look at the positions of the governments of these countries regarding the Arab and Islamic issues when we vote,” he said.

The potential move highlighted “a blatant and continuous bias by the successive British administrations to the Israeli occupation”, he said.

Shaheen also faulted the official Arab and Islamic response to Truss’s initiative, describing them as “still shy and modest so far” and urging more serious and practical action.

“I call upon Arab and Muslim governments… to think of economic steps that combat and counter and perhaps deter these steps before taking them. They are legitimate weapons, and they should be used for matters of great importance.”

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

About two weeks ago, Truss and other cabinet ministers attended an event organized by the CFI at the ruling party’s annual conference in Birmingham, telling the audience that she is a “huge Zionist and huge supporter of Israel” and pledged that she would “take the UK-Israel relationship from strength to strength”.

Speaking at the CFI’s event, Jake Berry, the Conservative party chairman, pledged his “unwavering commitment as chairman of the party that we will continue to build strong relationships with the state of Israel and to support it in its fight to ensure that it remains safe and that the capital in Jerusalem is the home to our new embassy.”

Robert Jenrick, the health minister, also alluded to UK government-owned land where an embassy could be built. Jenrick said, “We have a site in Jerusalem there waiting to go. It is time we took responsibility and built that embassy and recognized that the true capital of the state of Israel is obviously Jerusalem.”

Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl and Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely attended the event, urging Truss to proceed with the embassy move.

The Board’s President told the audience,” We are really hopeful that the government is going to move the embassy, like America, to Jerusalem – the capital of Israel.” Hotovel also suggested that a “review” of the British embassy’s location ought to be pursued.

She told the packed event, “Nothing can be more significant to show the friendship between Israel and the UK than this step.” “There is just one capital to the UK, and that is London. There is just one capital to Israel, Jerusalem,” she continued.

“For the last two thousand years, it’s been Jerusalem, always our spiritual home. We can’t ignore the historic truth,” Hotovel said, claiming that the US decision to relocate its embassy to occupied Jerusalem “promoted peace.”

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.

Opposition to the move has grown in recent days.

A spokesperson for the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the senior bishop of the Anglican Church, said he was “concerned about the potential impact of moving the British embassy” to Jerusalem.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the country’s most senior Catholic cleric, said that relocating the embassy would “be seriously damaging to any possibility of lasting peace in the region.”

Christian church leaders in Jerusalem also warned that the British government’s plans would be a “further impediment to advancing the already moribund peace process”.

Muslim leaders in Jerusalem have written to King Charles III condemning the move, saying “we oppose moving the British embassy to Jerusalem since we understand it, as a message to the universe that the UK, in contrary to the international law and the Status Quo, accepts the continuing Israeli illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories, the Israeli unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem and the Israeli illegal Judaisation measures in the Holy City.”

During the Conservative party conference, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the secretary-general of the Arab League, urged British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to “refrain from taking any illegal action”.

“I take this opportunity to express our concern over the recent statements by Prime Minister Truss on reviewing the location of the UK embassy in Israel,” said Gheit.

Former British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned, in a stark message, Truss from the potential move, telling her “this would be a breach of UN security council resolutions by one of its permanent members, break a longstanding commitment to work for two states for Israelis and Palestinians, and align Britain in foreign affairs with Donald Trump and three small states rather than the whole of the rest of the world.”