Israel Just Shut the British Consulate in Jerusalem, and Britain Could Do Nothing About It

Workers unscrewed the brass plaque that said British Consulate General from a wall in Sheikh Jarrah this week, and Britain was reduced to arguing about what to call the building. Israel closed the British consulate in Jerusalem, sent twenty British diplomats home.

If you want to understand how much Israel's patience with the current British government has run out, that plaque is where to start.

Skyline of Jerusalem (Digital art)

Why did Israel close the British consulate in Jerusalem?

Because Britain banned trade with Israeli communities in the Judea and Samaria, and Israel decided for once to answer a diplomatic punch with something other than a statement of regret. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar gave London thirty days to shut the consulate. The deadline landed this week, the signs came off the wall, and Saar said the consulate had ceased to function as a consulate. His explanation was blunt and I think fair. "We did not want to reach this point, but the Labour [Government's actions] brought us here."

France and Canada signed on to the same settlement sanctions. Israel moved only against Britain, which tells you this was about more than one trade measure. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband had already accused Israel of failing to prevent what he called ethnic cleansing in the Judea and Samaria. His government recognized a Palestinian state last September. It has since declared Israel's presence in eastern Jerusalem illegal. Somewhere in that sequence, the people in Jerusalem stopped reading British statements as the words of a friend applying pressure.

What was that consulate actually doing?

The consulate in Sheikh Jarrah was not a visa window for British tourists in Jerusalem. It was opened in 1839, it reported to London separately from the British embassy in Tel Aviv, and its entire portfolio was the Palestinians of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Twenty seven British diplomats worked there under a consul general who dealt with Palestinian officials as her counterparts. Palestinians interviewed this week said plainly what the arrangement gave them. The consulate documented what they called Israeli abuses and sent that material to London through a channel the Tel Aviv embassy could not replicate. So Britain ran a second diplomatic mission inside Israel's capital, staffed to handle a people Britain now recognizes as a state, and it answered to nobody in Israel. London called that history. Jerusalem eventually called it what it looks like, which is an embassy to a foreign government operating in your own city without your consent.

Imagine the reverse for a moment. Imagine Israel maintaining a consulate general in Belfast, reporting directly to Jerusalem, with a mandate covering Irish nationalists and a brief to collect material on British conduct in Northern Ireland. The Foreign Office would have closed it in a week and nobody in London would have called the closure illegal.

Pro Palestine rally in London (Shutterstock)

Miliband's statement was a small masterpiece of saving face. "We do not accept that the Government of Israel has the legal right to close the British Consulate General in Jerusalem," he said, before confirming that it had closed. He insisted the building will not be closing and will simply be known as the UK Mission, Jerusalem from now on, that the mission is independent and operational, and that it will continue its work with the Palestinian people. He added that Britain had temporarily withdrawn staff and families to keep them safe. Then came the part that settles who won. Britain had reportedly weighed expelling Israeli diplomats from London in retaliation, a package that would have hit twenty seven Israelis. It chose not to. Miliband said there would be no reciprocal action while discussions continue, and promised to build the presence back up at some unnamed point in the future. Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, urged her own government to defy the order outright. The government declined, and sent its national security adviser to Israel to negotiate the terms of the retreat instead.

A diplomat who tells you the closure was illegal and then negotiates the size of the skeleton crew allowed to stay has conceded the argument. Saar said the remaining seven will be a task force with activity that is, in his word, very limited.

Britain is not the only European country running a consulate in Jerusalem dedicated to the Palestinians. France and Spain have their own, and their officials spent this week studying exactly how this ended. The lesson available to them is uncomfortable and overdue. European capitals have grown accustomed to a particular arrangement with Israel, in which they recognize Palestinian statehood, sanction Israeli communities, lecture Israeli ministers in public, and still expect to keep every diplomatic privilege they enjoyed when they were behaving like allies.

That arrangement held for years because Israel never charged for it. Israeli governments absorbed the insults, worried about the headlines, and told themselves that the friendship mattered more than the indignity. This week Jerusalem finally located it, and the European reaction has been remarkably quiet for a continent that spent the last two years describing Israel as a country that ignores international law. No sanctions followed. No ambassadors were recalled. Britain asked to keep seven people in the building. Supporters of Israel should notice what that silence proves. The leverage European governments claim to hold over Israel is smaller than their rhetoric, and the leverage Israel holds over them is larger than Israeli officials usually admit. Every European mission on Israeli soil exists because Israel permits it.

What happens next between Israel and Britain

The embassy in Tel Aviv stays open, trade continues, and the intelligence relationship that both countries quietly depend on will outlive this fight. Britain will keep saying the closure was unlawful, will keep delivering aid and services to Palestinians out of a smaller office, and will wait for a different Israeli government with a friendlier reading of the Labour Party. Israel's election is at the end of this month, and plenty of people in London are openly hoping it produces someone easier to pressure.

They may get their wish and it will not matter, because the principle has now been established and no Israeli government will want to be the one that gives it back. A country that keeps a consulate in your capital to manage relations with somebody else is telling you it does not consider the capital yours. Israel heard the message, and this week it answered in the only language the Foreign Office actually reads, which is the language of consequences.