LONDON: The British government is committed to the full restoration of the UK diplomatic mission in East Jerusalem that serves Palestinians, Sir Vincent Fean, a former consul general in the city, told Arab News.
It came after the diplomatic facility’s status was downgraded this month following threats in September by the Israeli government to shut it down completely.
“The British government is committed to ‘build back,’ i.e., to restore the full complement of this UK diplomatic mission,” Fean said.
“There is no justification for what (the Israeli Foreign Minister) Gideon Saar did; nor would there be justification for Israeli action against other British interests in Jerusalem.”
The retired diplomat and former ambassador headed the Consulate General in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood between 2010 and 2014.
“The British Government has maintained a diplomatic presence in Jerusalem since 1838; it continues today,” Fean said.
“It has adapted to change; in 1948, and again in 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice advised that the 1967 occupation is unlawful, advice accepted by (the British Foreign Secretary) Ed Miliband on Sept. 8” this year.
That same day, Israel gave British authorities 30 days to close its consulate in East Jerusalem, which operates from a building owned by the British government a stone’s throw from the ancient walls of the Old City. The move was retaliation for sweeping UK sanctions and a trade ban targeting goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
On Oct. 8, the day the deadline expired, Miliband said the facility would remain open but be renamed the “UK Mission, Jerusalem” in a last-minute compromise agreement with Israeli authorities that included a “temporary” scaling back of diplomatic staff.
“The UK Mission will continue to deliver vital services, working with the Palestinian people,” Fean said.
Britain governed Palestine from 1920 until 1948 under a mandate from the League of Nations following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Prior to that, during the reign of Queen Victoria, British ambassadors and envoys had established a foothold in the city in 1838, during a decade-long Egyptian occupation, before their Ottoman rivals recaptured it two years later. The site of that first mission was near the Jaffa Gate, the western entrance to the Old City, adjacent to the Christ Church. At the time, only Britain and France maintained a diplomatic presence in the Old City; other European countries and Russia had missionaries who served Christian pilgrims.
The mission moved to its Sheikh Jarrah home during the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s rule over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The building was purchased in 1963 and inaugurated shortly before the Six-Day War in June 1967, during which Israel captured the area.
“Sheikh Jarrah was known in the 1950s and 1960s as the ‘neighborhood of consuls’ during the Jordanian rule,” Khalil Tafakji, a cartographer and an expert on borders and Israeli settlements, told Arab News.
“Wealthy families in Jerusalem, such as the Nashashibi, Husseini and Jarallah, began building mansions outside of the Old City in this area in the early 1900s; this attracted diplomats, health institutions and hotels to establish their presence in Sheikh Jarrah.”
Most countries in the run-up to the 1967 war maintained embassies in Jordan’s capital, Amman, and consulates in Jerusalem. However, the Israeli occupation led to the closure of several of the consulates, including those belonging to Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The British diplomatic building is still located at 15 Nashashibibi Street. Only a few cedars remain in the vast front garden of the former Lebanese consulate, however, as a remnant of a bygone era. The nearby Jordanian government hospital building was converted into a national headquarters for the Israel Police shortly after the war, and later developed into a government complex called Kiryat Menachem Begin.
In recent years, an Israeli settlement drive in Sheikh Jarrah has encroached on its northern parts, where most of the diplomatic missions were established, including those of Turkiye, Sweden, France and Spain, as well as the UK.
This week, the Amana settler organization advanced a plan to build 122 homes on a 5,665-square-meter plot in Karm Al-Mufti, land originally owned by the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who died in 1974. It is close to the UK Mission, and Amana was one of the settler groups sanctioned by the UK government.
Sheikh Jarrah became a flashpoint in 2021 when Palestinian residents staged protests there against eviction orders issued by an Israeli court so that settlers could move into their homes. It was also a scene of protests during Jordan’s rule, especially during the war against Egypt, known as the Suez Crisis, launched by France, the UK and Israel, Tafakji said.
Fean confirmed that the mission in Jerusalem handles matters related to Palestine, which the British government officially recognized as a state in September 2025. It operates “separate and independent” of the British embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel.
British civil servants in the UAE currently make the final decisions about visas for Palestinian applicants, while assistants in Ramallah collect the required biometrics and payments. Previously, British visa decisions were made in Jordan. Fean said the change “was a UK administrative decision, not political.”
Since 1967, the heads of the Consulate General “have not presented commissions to Israel or received an Israeli exequatur,” or authorization, according to a legal assessment by the Britain Palestine Project, of which Fean is a trustee.
“There is no accreditation to Israel for Israel to withdraw. Israel does not exercise sovereignty over East Jerusalem. There are clear limits to its powers as occupier,” the project said in response to Israel’s threat to close the British mission, which operates directly under the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and oversees Palestinian-related matters in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in July 1980 and has subsequently exerted sovereignty over the area. Miliband said on Oct. 8 that “the UK government reiterates its long-standing view that East Jerusalem is occupied territory.”
Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, described the downsizing of the UK’s diplomatic facility as the closure of the Consulate General in East Jerusalem but said a “task force” of seven diplomats would remain because the building was British government property.
Saar is a member of the ruling Likud party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has increasingly denounced European officials and diplomats for their criticisms of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, where its actions have faced accusations of genocide. The party faces a general election on Oct. 27.
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Arab News it was hard to predict whether the right-wing Israeli coalition government would escalate its threats to close the UK Mission should it win reelection.
“Assuming that Netanyahu is still prime minister, it could be a situation in which they wish to heal relations, including with Britain, or it could be a situation that they still wish to escalate,” he said.
“Maintaining a diplomatic presence (in East Jerusalem) is very important; it asserts that Britain has a stake in the future of the city. It is determined to continue its representation there.
“Britain has maintained exactly the same position (regarding the status of the city), in terms of the legality, that it does not accept sovereignty of any state over any part of Jerusalem,” Doyle added.