In occupied East Jerusalem, Britain keeps a consulate that is not an embassy. It runs separately from the British Embassy in Israel. Its business is with Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza: the politics, and the consular work of passports and papers. Israel has ordered it closed by Thursday, October 8.

On Monday the Israeli outlet Ynet reported Britain’s reply, carried by Al Jazeera and described there as unverified. According to Ynet, Simon Walters, the British ambassador to Israel, had told Israeli officials how London would respond. If the consulate is shut, 27 British diplomats lose their diplomatic status there, and Britain would expel 27 Israeli diplomats in return. One for one. Ynet said the British embassy in Israel declined to comment.

The arithmetic of retaliation

Diplomacy has always kept a kind of double-entry ledger. A credential revoked here is entered against a credential revoked there, so that neither side’s books show a loss without a matching loss on the other. Usually the sums are small: one attaché, two, a symbolic handful. Twenty-seven is not small. As The Media Line relayed it, Ynet reported that Israel’s embassy in London employs only slightly more than 27 diplomats. If those figures hold, the British count would come close to emptying the Israeli mission.

None of this has been announced. It is a warning, passed privately and leaked, and the reports remain unconfirmed. Still, a warning that is allowed to leak three days before a deadline is also a message.

How it began

The quarrel began on September 8, in the House of Commons. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a ban on importing goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, according to NBC News, and accused settlers of “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians. CNN reported that the package also sanctioned more settlers, targeted companies and individuals involved in settlement expansion in construction, infrastructure, finance and real estate, and tightened arms exports to Israel further. The measures were expected to take effect within six to nine months. Britain also changed its legal position. It had long called the settlements illegal. It now holds that the occupation as a whole is unlawful, in line with the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2024. Miliband had already been hardening his language toward Israel.

Britain did not act alone. Al Jazeera reported that 12 states, among them France and Canada, backed restrictions on trade with the settlements.

Israel answered the same day. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called Britain’s statements about Israeli conduct in the West Bank “outrageous lies”, and also morally distorted and antisemitic, NPR reported. The orders followed. Britain had 30 days to close the East Jerusalem consulate and take its diplomats out of the city. It was barred from the US-led coordination mission for Gaza. British training of Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank would end. Some elected British officials and other nationals would be refused entry to Israel. France and Canada had signed up to the same kind of trade measures, but Israel did not move against them, according to the reports.

The pattern is wider than London. Israel has also stripped Dutch diplomats of their status in Ramallah over a Dutch ban on settlement goods. Each time, the reply falls on the offices through which a foreign government deals with Palestinians.

Here a reflection is allowed, and it is only that. When a state wants to punish another state for what it said about the Palestinians, it shuts the door the Palestinians use. The sanctions were about settlements. The penalty lands on a consular office whose daily work is with the people living beside those settlements, in Hebron or Nablus or Gaza City.

A quiet journey

Before the threat there was an attempt at persuasion. Reuters reported on Monday that Jonathan Powell, Britain’s National Security Adviser, had travelled to Israel the week before without announcing it, to try to get Israeli officials to reverse the closure. No agreement came of it. According to Reuters, the talks are still going on.

Powell is the man British governments send when the public channel has failed. He went quietly and came back without a deal, and within days the ambassador was reportedly naming a number. The visit and the warning belong to one sequence: first the request, then the price of refusing it.

Nothing reported by Monday suggested Israel had moved its date. Thursday, October 8, is the last day of the 30. For the 27 people whose accreditation runs out then, the dispute over settlements, sovereignty and the legal status of an occupied city has become a practical matter of packing up an office and leaving it.

In London, if Ynet’s account is right, another 27 are waiting on the same date.