LONDON (Middle East Eye) – The UK’s Department for International Trade has admitted that it “mistakenly” used an image of the Dome of the Rock in Al-Quds’s Old City on the cover of a document promoting a prospective free trade agreement with the Zionist regime.
The document was hurriedly changed after British government officials were alerted to a Twitter post by Middle East Eye contributor Chris Doyle pointing out that the golden-domed shrine is in occupied territory and does not belong to the Zionist regimes.
The image featured on the cover of an information note published on the UK government’s website on 1 February as part of material relating to a consultation “to help inform our approach for starting negotiations on a free trade agreement with Israel in the future”.
The document also included another image of the Dome of the Rock, which stands in Al-Aqsa Mosque complex and is one of Al-Quds’ most recognizable landmarks, on its introduction page.
But the document was flagged up to senior officials in the Department for International Trade on 10 February, shortly after Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu), had posted a link to it on Twitter, according to an email exchange obtained by MEE via a freedom of information request.