On a Thursday morning in Jerusalem, the world’s oldest-running argument between a great power and a young state produced its latest artefact: a bare wall. Israel removed the signage of the British Consulate General in occupied East Jerusalem as its deadline to shut the mission expired, Al Jazeera reported, and announced that twenty British diplomats — the consul general among them — would end their assignments and leave the country. The building itself, London answered, is going nowhere.
Two governments now describe the same morning in two languages of their own. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, declared on social media that the British consulate was “ceasing operations,” writing that “We did not want it to come to this, but the Labour Government’s actions have led us here,” as Euronews reported. His British counterpart, Ed Miliband, replied in the same register of unbending courtesy: the consulate “will not be closing, and will be known as the UK Mission, Jerusalem from today.”
Twenty out, seven to stay
The arithmetic of the punishment is precise. Twenty diplomats depart; a “task force of no more than seven diplomats with a very limited scope of activity” may stay and work from the building, Sa’ar said. Al Jazeera’s account of the downgrade captures the ambiguity in its very headline: has the consulate been shut, or merely diminished? The answer depends on which capital’s communiqué one reads. This is how modern diplomacy fights when it wishes not to break — by reclassifying.
Miliband was careful to cede nothing of principle. “We have been clear that we do not accept that the Government of Israel has the legal right to close the British Consulate General in Jerusalem,” he said, stressing that the new UK Mission “is independent, operational, and will continue to deliver vital services and our work with the Palestinian people.” Some staff and their families had been “temporarily withdrawn” in recent weeks as a safety precaution, he added — without an understanding, Britain said, it could not have the necessary assurances for the security of its staff and premises — and London will now work to rebuild its presence.
Sa’ar, for his part, offered the mechanics of a managed quarrel. “We agreed to continue dialogue between the governments, during which both sides will be able to raise issues of importance to them,” he said, according to the Independent, adding that “no further measures will be taken against it over implementation of decisions under understandings with Britain.” Miliband, in turn, promised no reciprocal action while talks proceed — notable given the week’s speculation, reported when rews covered the looming deadline, that London had warned it might expel 27 Israeli diplomats in answer.
The month of September
The roots of Thursday’s theatre lie in the beginning of September, when Israel said it would shutter the consulate in response to British sanctions. On 8 September, standing before parliament, Miliband announced an “import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories” — settlements illegal under international law — and said something no British foreign secretary had said before in that form: “The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank - perpetrated by settler terrorists.”
He went further, accusing the Israeli government of turning “a blind eye” to it, “and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians.” Sa’ar branded the accusations “outrageous lies.” London’s position, voiced by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, was that the measures were “carefully judged, targeted steps that are not aimed at the Israeli people, but at the unacceptable policies of the current Israeli government.”
Miliband closed his statement on Thursday with the old incantation: “The UK stands steadfast by the measures we took on 8 September, in concert with the international community, in support of a two-state solution to deliver peace and security for the people of Israel and Palestine.”
Two hundred years of the Union Jack
There is a longer memory in this quarrel than either side’s statement admits outright. The British have kept a consular flag in Jerusalem for roughly two centuries — Miliband said “nearly 200 years,” the Independent counted over 200 — since the days when consuls in the Ottoman city were miniature emperors in frock coats, and the powers of Europe measured their standing by the number of flags above their doors. Al Jazeera’s chronicle of the two countries’ tensions reaches back further still, to the King David Hotel bombing of the Mandate years, and finds Thursday’s row only the “latest downturn in a strained relationship.”
Britain, which once administered Palestine and then withdrew from it in bloodshed, still calls East Jerusalem “occupied territory” — the formula Miliband’s office reiterated even as the sign came down. That is the heart of the dispute dressed as protocol: for Israel, the consulate’s function is a political claim carved into a building; for Britain, its mission of nearly two centuries cannot be wished away by decree without conceding the very point the sanctions were meant to make.
So the diplomats pack their trunks, the plaque is pried from its fixings, and seven unnamed officials will arrive next week at the same door, behind the same gate, answering to a slightly smaller name. The kings and commissars have always been fond of this ceremony — the renaming, the reflagging — and Jerusalem, who has seen borders redrawn more often than her stones can count, will note how little on her streets has changed. The consulate is a mission now. The city, in the eyes of the powers that quarrel over it, was always one.