Positions On Jerusalem - United Kingdom Position

United Kingdom Position

• The United Kingdom] position on Jerusalem states, "Jerusalem was supposed to be a ‘corpus separatum’, or international city administered by the UN. But this was never set up: immediately after the UNGA resolution partitioning Palestine, Israel occupied West Jerusalem and Jordan occupied East Jerusalem (including the Old City). We recognised the de facto control of Israel and Jordan, but not sovereignty. In 1967, Israel occupied E Jerusalem, which we continue to consider is under illegal military occupation by Israel. Our Embassy to Israel is in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem. In E Jerusalem we have a Consulate-General, with a Consul-General who is not accredited to any state: this is an expression of our view that no state has sovereignty over Jerusalem."

The UK believes that the city's status has yet to be determined, and maintains that it should be settled in an overall agreement between the parties concerned, but considers that the city should not again be divided. The Declaration of Principles and the Interim Agreement, signed by Israel and the PLO on 13 September 1993 and 28 September 1995 respectively, left the issue of the status of Jerusalem to be decided in the ‘permanent status’ negotiations between the two parties.

In 2012, the UK Press Complaints Commission initially ruled that the newspaper The Guardian had not acted wrongly in writing that "Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel; Tel Aviv is," but this was later overturned. In the latter ruling, the UK Press Complaints Commission ruled that The Guardian was wrong to refer to the Israeli capital unequivocally as Tel Aviv, saying that this "had the potential to mislead readers and raised a breach of... the Editors’ Code of Practice." In addition, prior to the latter ruling, The Guardian retracted their statement, saying, "While it was therefore right to issue a correction to make clear Israel's designation of Jerusalem as its capital is not recognised by the international community, we accept that it is wrong to state that Tel Aviv – the country's financial and diplomatic centre – is the capital".