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When Will Britain Recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel?
(Spectator-UK) Stephen Daisley - British Home Secretary Sajid Javid traveled to Jerusalem and visited the Western Wall on Monday. His visit was especially noteworthy because the UK does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and in fact doesn't recognize it as even being inside Israel. East Jerusalem, runs the UK position, is "part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories." In many ways, Javid's visit is a positive step forward in UK relations with a reliable ally that we have seldom treated as such. Since issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the UK has more often been a hindrance than a help to Zionism, from the White Paper to an institutionally hostile foreign policy apparatus. That this son of a Pakistani Muslim immigrant is showing leadership after a century of British error on the Jewish return to their ancestral homeland says something encouraging about the country we have become. As the UK heads for the EU exit, it will need all the friends it can get, but there is just one friendly nation whose seat of government the UK refuses to recognize and in whose capital it demurs from locating its embassy. Recognizing Israel's capital and relocating our embassy there would go some way to righting the historical wrong of dividing up the Jewish people's homeland and barring them from escaping there in their darkest hour. Recognizing a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would concentrate Palestinian minds, too. There are no disincentives for a Palestinian Authority that believes it can wait until a fully-formed state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, falls into its lap. The UK's acceptance of Israel's capital would underscore the risks of rejectionism. The more the Palestinians say No, the less there might be to say Yes to.