When news broke that Israel would be closing the British Consulate in East Jerusalem in response to the UK’s recent sanctions, many observers framed the move as diplomatic retaliation. Having served as Head of Communications at the British Embassy in Tel Aviv in 2023, I see it differently. To me, this decision was not only predictable — it was long overdue. The consulate’s very existence was built on a diplomatic fiction that never reflected the reality on the ground, and Israel has finally chosen to stop indulging it.

During my time at the Embassy, I was responsible for communicating the UK’s official policy on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The core message was always the same: peace can only be achieved when Israel retreats to the pre-1967 borders, with Jerusalem as a shared capital. I repeated that line countless times, but I never believed it. It was a mantra from another era, disconnected from the lived reality of Jerusalem and the political landscape that has evolved over decades. Inside the Embassy, many of us understood this. But policy is policy, and communications staff don’t get to rewrite it.

The tension this created was palpable, especially between diplomats and Israeli locally engaged staff. Many of the........

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