LONDON (Al Jazeera) – The United Kingdom has “no plans” to relocate its embassy to Al-Quds, according to a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, dismissing his predecessor’s review into a possible move of the embassy away from Tel Aviv.
The spokeswoman for Sunak, who replaced Liz Truss as prime minister last week, told reporters on Thursday that the relocation idea had been “looked at” under the previous administration.
When asked if the UK was still considering the relocation, she said the government had “no [such] plans”.
Back in September, former UK PM Liz Truss had pledged outgoing Zionist prime minister Yair Lapid that she would review the relocation plan.
The decision had drawn backlash from Palestinian groups and people, regional countries, and church leaders.
By moving the British embassy to occupied Al-Quds, Truss was seeking to follow in the footsteps of Donald Trump, the former President of the United States, who moved the U.S. embassy to Al-Quds despite worldwide condemnations.
At the time when Washington implemented the illegal move, then then-Prime Minister Theresa May said the UK had no plans to move its embassy and publicly disagreed with the U.S. move.
The embassy relocation plan was first proposed by Truss in a letter to Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a pro-Zionist lobby group, earlier this year.
The occupying regime lays claim to the entire Al-Quds, but the international community views the city’s eastern sector as occupied territory while Palestinians consider it the capital of their future state.
Meanwhile, Al-Quds is at the heart of the Palestinian conflict in the past decades as Palestinians insist that East Al-Quds was illegally occupied by the regime in 1967 and it should serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
In a statement on Wednesday, Palestinian ambassador to London Husam Zomlot welcomed the Sunak government’s decision, also appreciating all those who “helped keep the UK in line with international law.”