Israel does not have a legal right to act on its plan to close the British consulate in East Jerusalem, the former attorney general Dominic Grieve has advised the UK Foreign Office.
Israel has said it intends to shut the consulate on 8 October in response to the sweeping ban on trade with goods from Israeli settlements announced by the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, this month.
Israel said on Sunday that it planned to revoke the credentials of Dutch diplomats from the country’s mission to Palestine, in response to the Netherlands’ ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements.
Grieve, who was a Conservative MP between 1997 and 2019 and attorney general from 2010 to 2014, said Israel did not have the right to shut the consulate since it was situated in East Jerusalem, which is recognised by the United Nations and most of its members, including the UK, as being occupied Palestinian territory.
When challenged in the Lords by the former UK ambassador Lord Hannay on the legality of Israel’s action, the Foreign Office minister Lord Wood said his fellow peer may have a point, and knew more about the subject than he did, but that he feared Israel de facto could make the consulate inoperable.
Grieve said the UK should challenge the decision in the courts, arguing Israel was asserting a right it did not possess as an occupying power to impose sovereign control over East Jerusalem.
The UK mission in Jerusalem dates from 1838, predating the creation of the state of Israel by more than 100 years, and is separate from the embassy based in Tel Aviv. The consul general reports direct to the Foreign Office, and has its own staff and a distinct diplomatic role, covering Jerusalem, the rest of the West Bank and Gaza.
Grieve argues in an advisory paper sent to the Foreign Office by the British Palestine Project that “retaining a consulate general in East Jerusalem after recognition of the state of Palestine preserves the UK’s position that Jerusalem’s final status remains to be determined. It does not concede Israeli sovereignty.”
Grieve said the UK government had a duty to oppose the move. He pointed out the UK government had formally accepted the July 2024 advisory opinion of the international court of justice that governments should recognise Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian territory as unlawful.
Separate from the legal position, Grieve said the closure of the consulate was a measure designed to fall on Palestinians, not on Britain alone, because it would hamper aid, oversight and reporting from the West Bank and Gaza.
He said: “Israel’s method in the city has been to create facts on the ground through unlawful settlement building and property seizure, and to press states to recognise those facts diplomatically. The closure should be challenged as a further attempt to exercise powers outwith those permitted to an occupier.”
In closing the consulate, the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, asserted Israeli sovereignty over the whole city of Jerusalem, which the UN security council has expressly said Israel does not possess.
The decision to revoke credentials of Dutch diplomats, announced by Sa’ar on Sunday, also in effect bars them from Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem and is likely to force the closure of their representative office in Ramallah.
The Netherlands’ ban on imports from occupied Palestine came into force on 22 September. The guidance applies to companies and individual travellers, and covers items bought before or after the legislation came into force, including gifts, souvenirs and items for personal use, the Dutch customs authority said.
Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza means diplomats need Israeli accreditation to operate in Palestine.
Sa’ar claimed that Dutch diplomats from the Ramallah mission could continue representing their nation’s interests “from Palestinian Authority territory, rather than from the territory of the state of Israel”. The Israeli foreign ministry did not immediately respond to questions about how this would work in practical terms.
When Israel took the same measures against Norwegian diplomats in 2024, in response to the country’s decision to recognise Palestine, it was forced to close its mission based in the West Bank town of al-Ram.
“We consider the Netanyahu government’s decision to be extreme and unreasonable,” the Norwegian foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, said at the time. Diplomats based in Jordan have supported Norwegian relations with Palestine since then.
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