UK’s Labour opposes potential move of Britain’s embassy in ‘Israel’ to Jerusalem

London (QNN)- The UK’s Labour, Liberal Democrat and Scottish National parties have reportedly opposed moving the British embassy in ‘Israel’ to Jerusalem, saying such a move “would be a provocation.”

UK’s Prime Minister Liz 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.

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.

Last week, Truss and other cabinet ministers attended an event organised 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 recognised 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.”

But representatives of the three opposition parties told Middle East Eye (MEE) on Wednesday that they rejected moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

“Our position on this hasn’t changed, Labour does not support the move,” a spokesperson for the main opposition party said. “We do not want the move to happen and we will oppose it.”

The spokesperson did not answer specifically whether Labour would reverse a potential location change were it to form the next government.

Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, told MEE, “Moving the UK embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would be a provocation. The UK should under no circumstances be taking steps which risk inflaming tensions and damaging the prospects of peace.”

Moran, who is the first British MP of Palestinian descent, said she had written to James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, “to make clear that moving the embassy should only come as part of a negotiated peace settlement between Israel and Palestine. “This review should accordingly be stopped,” she said. “My energy is in stopping this move from happening in the first place.”

The Scottish National Party pointed MEE to a column its foreign affairs spokesperson, Alyn Smith, wrote last week, in which he condemned Truss’s consultation as “inconsistent with international law and does nothing to help bring about a peaceful two-state solution.

“Whether the UK Government wants to acknowledge it or not, it has a responsibility to the people of that region for the mess it created (Palestine had been a British Mandate, after all, prior to the creation of Israel in 1948),” Smith wrote in The National.

“At a time when relations between Palestinian and Israeli communities have deteriorated to record low levels, it is shameful that the UK has absconded from its duty to promote peace in the Middle East.”

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 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 who have their embassies in occupied Jerusalem.