9 October, 2026. The Israeli government, at odds with the UK over Gaza and the West Bank, announced yesterday that the British Consulate-General in East Jerusalem (de facto embassy to Palestine) would have to close. However, last minute diplomacy agreed that, with much reduced staffing and henceforward called simply a ‘Mission’, it could survive. This is hardly the end of this matter.
Following talks with the UK over the previous week, on 8 October Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that the British Consulate-General in the Sheikh Jarrah Quarter of East Jerusalem had ended its role and that, accordingly, 20 British ‘diplomats’, including the consul-general Helen Winterton, would be leaving the country immediately. Nevertheless, he admitted that the building is the property of the British Government and was allowing seven diplomats to remain as a ‘task force’. It would henceforth be known by the vague, antiseptic title of ‘UK Mission, Jerusalem’.
In return, the UK government agreed not to engage in the kind of tit-for-tat expulsion of Israeli diplomats in London which is usual in this sort of episode. This is just as well for Israel because its embassy boasts only 25 diplomats and has had no ambassador for over a year, despite the fact that at least one Jewish commentator regards it as Israel’s most important diplomatic post after Washington. In his own public statement, British foreign secretary Ed Miliband (a previous leader of the Labour Party and himself Jewish) made clear his view that Israel had no legal right to close the consular mission because East Jerusalem was occupied territory, and emphasised that the new mission would be as active as possible and – obviously hoping for the disappearance of Netanyahu in the Israeli elections on 27 October – re-build its staff as soon as circumstances allowed. ‘The UK Mission, Jerusalem’, he added, ‘is independent, operational, and will continue to deliver vital services and our work with the Palestinian people.’ Making this easier would be the remaining proximity to East Jerusalem of the Expelled Twenty, for it is plausibly reported that the plan is to settle them in Amman, capital of neighbouring Jordan. This sort of thing has been done before, elsewhere as well as in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, I’m hoping that the British Foreign Office will obtain firm written guarantees for the safety of the Magnificent Seven; Miliband was clearly not happy on this point in his own statement on 8 October. For one thing, it is unclear if they will have the comprehensive protection of the VCDR 1961 or the somewhat weaker security provided by the VCCR 1963. On this point, formally calling this mission a ‘Mission’ gets us nowhere because, as we noted in the third edition of The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy (2012), ‘mission’ is simply ‘a generic term’ for any kind of overseas diplomatic or consular operation. In this case it seems to be sui generis. Thankfully, it seems that all accompanying family have been evacuated.