Israel–United Kingdom
Israel–United Kingdom relations, or Anglo-Israeli relations, are the diplomatic and commercial ties between the United Kingdom and Israel. The United Kingdom maintains an embassy in Tel Aviv and a consulate in Eilat;
It also maintains a consulate-general in Jerusalem that represents Britain in that city and the Palestinian territories.
Israel has an embassy and a consulate in London.
Britain seized Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I.
Close cooperation between Britain and the Yishuv, the nascent pre-state Jewish community of Palestine, developed during this time when Britain received intelligence from the Nili Jewish spy network, which assisted British forces in conquering Palestine. Additionally, over 5000 Jews from various countries served in the Jewish Legion of the British Army which fought at Gallipoli and in the Palestine Campaign, although some Palestinian Jews also served in the Ottoman Army. In 1917, Britain issued the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Six weeks afterward, British troops concluded the Palestine campaign, driving out the Ottoman army from Jerusalem, under the leadership of General Allenby.
The British then took control of Palestine. Under British military rule;
THE ZIONIST ENTERPRISE WAS RENEWED.
In 1920, Britain established its authority under the Mandate for Palestine granted by the League of Nations, which was confirmed in the San Remo agreement of 1922.
A High Commissioner was appointed with instructions to allow the Jews to build their national home. and spent 31 years in charge of British Mandate Palestine under a League of Nations mandate that originally extended to both sides of the Jordan River, although Transjordan was separated from Palestine by the British.
In 1937, the Peel Commission presented a plan for a Jewish state and an Arab state. After this was rejected, the British District Commissioner for the Galilee, Lewis Yellard Andrews was assassinated by Arab gunmen in Nazareth. In 1939, Britain announced the White Paper of 1939, which greatly restricted Jewish immigration and land purchases and called for a single unitary state in Palestine, which greatly engaged the Yishuv.
Towards the end of World War II, the British faced a growing Jewish insurgency in Palestine.
The army's failure to defeat the insurgents convinced the British government that Palestine was a lost cause, and directly led to its decision to withdraw from the territory.
In February 1947, the British government – having already decided to withdraw from India – announced it was handing the mandate back to the League of Nations.
The British mandate was relinquished and the establishment of the State of Israel was affirmed by a United Nations General Assembly resolution.
The conflict with the insurgents continued until the last British soldier left Palestine; at the end of April 1948, British forces fought a small battle against Zionist militias near Jaffa, temporarily preventing a Jewish takeover of the city, while failing to expel the militias from Menashiya.
Throughout the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Anglo-Israeli relations were decidedly hostile, to the point of bringing the two countries to the edge of war. Britain, which had military forces in Egypt and Transjordan and defense agreements with both nations, foresaw possible military intervention on their behalf. Early in the war, a Royal Air Force base in Amman was hit during an Israeli raid on the city.
The British threatened to attack the Israeli Air Force if such an action was repeated. During the battles in Sinai, the Royal Air Force conducted almost daily reconnaissance missions over Israel and the Sinai.
RAF reconnaissance aircraft took off from Egyptian airbases and sometimes flew alongside Royal Egyptian Air Force planes, and high-flying British aircraft frequently flew over Haifa and Ramat David Airbase.
The British government planned military action against Israel codenamed Operation Clatter in the event of an Israeli invasion of Egypt and the flights were deployed to discover the strength of the Israeli Air Force and locate its forward bases.
On 20 November 1948, an unarmed RAF photo-reconnaissance de Havilland Mosquito was shot down by an Israeli Air Force P-51 Mustang. On 7 January 1949, four British Spitfire FR18s flew over an Israeli convoy that had been attacked by five Egyptian Spitfires fifteen minutes earlier.
Fearing an imminent attack, Israeli ground troops opened fire on the British Spitfires, and shot down one with a tank-mounted machine gun.
The remaining three Spitfires were subsequently shot down by Israeli planes, and two pilots were killed.
Two of the surviving pilots were taken to Tel Aviv and interrogated, and were later released.
The Israelis dragged the wrecks of the British planes into Israeli territory, but failed to conceal them before they were photographed by British reconnaissance planes.
In response, the Royal Air Force readied its planes to bomb Israeli airfields, British troops in the Middle East were placed on high alert with all leave cancelled, and British citizens were advised to leave Israel.
Convinced the British would not allow the loss of five aircraft and two pilots go without retaliation, the Israelis were determined to repel any retaliatory airstrike, and made preparations to defend their airbases.
However, British commanders defied pressure from the squadrons involved in the incidents, and refused to authorize any strikes.
Following a British ultimatum to vacate the Sinai, Israeli forces pulled back.
War between Israel and the United Kingdom was thus avoided.
The United Kingdom recognized Israel de facto on 13 May 1949, and de jure on 28 April 1950.
In the aftermath of the war, Israel—in cooperation with France—successfully worked to oppose Anglo-Iraqi plans for an Iraqi takeover of Syria.
In 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and blocked the Straits of Tiran to ships bound to Israel, whilst encouraging violent terror attacks into Israel via Egyptian-controlled Gaza.
Britain and France resolved to secure the Suez Canal by force.
Although Israel had its own problems with Egypt and wanted to attack, Britain was hesitant to fight alongside the Israelis, lest the ensuing backlash in the Arab world threaten London's close allies in Baghdad and Amman. In the end, the government of Anthony Eden reluctantly included Israel in the war plans, due to French pressure and the need for a local ally.
In November 1956, Israel attacked Egypt, and Britain and France seized most of the Suez Canal before financial and diplomatic intervention by Russia and the United States forced them to halt their advance.
This marked the point where Israeli-British relations were at their best.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the UK was seen as pro-Arab, maintaining close relations with Jordan and the Gulf states.
However, in 1975 the UK voted against the motion in the UN that “Zionism is racism.”
Israeli-British relations were strained in the 1980s. During the 1982 Lebanon War, Britain imposed an arms embargo on Israel, which would not be lifted until 1994.
Israel allegedly supplied weaponry to Argentina during the 1982 Falklands War.
There were also two diplomatic incidents during the 1980s that involved operations by the Mossad (Israeli secret service).
In 1986, a bag containing eight forged British passports was discovered in a telephone booth in West Germany.
The passports had been the work of Mossad, and were intended for the Israeli Embassy in London for use in covert operations.
The British government, furious, demanded that Israel give a promise not forge its passports again, which was obtained. In 1988, two Israeli diplomats from the Mossad station of the Israeli Embassy in London were expelled and the station closed after it was discovered that a Palestinian living in London, Ismail Sowan, had been recruited as a double agent to infiltrate the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Relations improved significantly in the 2000's and 2010's.
In June 2019, the Royal Air Force and the Israeli Air Force carried out their first-ever joint exercise.
The UK Government's mission statement regarding Israel reads:
"We promote Britain’s security, prosperity and well-being, and regional peace, through partnership with Israel".
Two State Solution According to The Foreign & Commonwealth Office "the Foreign Secretary has made it clear that there is no more urgent foreign policy in 2013 than restarting Israeli-Palestinian talks and making substantive progress towards the two-state solution...
We are concerned by developments that threaten the viability of the two-state solution, including the construction of settlements on occupied land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem...
Our goal is a secure and universally recognised Israel living alongside a sovereign and viable Palestinian state, based on the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem the future capital of both states, and a just, fair and realistic settlement for refugees…
The British government is clear that, ultimately, the way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is through direct negotiations between the parties.
We continue to call on both sides to show the strong leadership needed to achieve peace, to take the necessary steps to build trust and to work towards the resumption of negotiations without preconditions."
In 2014, after the United Kingdom lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favour of a recognising the state of Palestine, Israel braced for a potential "domino effect," since Britain is viewed as "one of the world’s friendliest countries to Israel."
However, the resolution passed was non-binding and not an official declaration.
According to a 2014 poll conducted by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes for the BBC World Service, the British public views Israel overwhelmingly negatively, while Israelis view the UK positively:
72% of British people were reported as holding negative views towards Israel, with only 19% holding positive ones.
The same poll recorded that 50% of Israeli respondents viewed the UK favourably, with only 6% doing so negatively.
An October 2015 poll of the British public, commissioned by the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre and carried out by the British market research firm Populus, indicated that 62% of Britons described themselves as viewing Israel negatively, while 19% said they were favourable to Israel.
In the same poll 52% of respondents said they considered Israel "an ally of Britain", with 19% of respondents disagreeing with that description.
Respondents were asked if they agreed with the statement:
"I don't boycott goods or produce from Israel and find it difficult to understand why others would single out Israel to boycott given everything else that's going on around the world at the moment"—43% said they agreed while 12% said they disagreed.
When asked if they would be more likely to boycott goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories than goods from Israel itself, 25% replied in the affirmative and 19% replied in the negative.
Annual bilateral trade exceeds US$3 billion and over 300 known Israeli companies are operating in Britain.
While visiting Israel in November 2010, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague called UK-Israel science and business ties "one of the cornerstones of the relationship between Britain and Israel."
In 2009, the United Kingdom's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued new guidelines concerning labelling of goods imported from the West Bank.
The new guidelines require labelling to clarify whether West Bank products originate from settlements or from the Palestinian economy. Israel's foreign ministry said that the UK was "catering to the demands of those whose ultimate goal is the boycott of Israeli products"; but this was denied by the UK government, which claimed that the aim of the new regulations was merely to allow consumers to choose for themselves what produce they buy.
In 2011 the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Israel launched a new project aiming to facilitate economic and business ties between the U.K. and Israel. Dubbed the UK–Israel Technologies Hub, the initiative seeks also to identify opportunities among Israeli and Palestinian Arab entrepreneurs.
One of the goals of the project is to encourage British companies to set up R&D facilities in Israel in order to tap Israel's skilled engineering base. Cleantech development is among the sectors the Technologies Hub targets for promoting British-Israeli partnerships.
A 2011 White Paper on Trade and Investment for Growth issued by the government of the United Kingdom pointed to Israel as a pivotal strategic partner for Britain's future.
Figures released early in 2012 showed that Israel was the United Kingdom's largest trade partner in the Middle East, with bilateral trade between the two nations amounting to £3.75 billion ($6 billion) in 2011 – up 34% from the preceding year.
Matthew Gould, Britain's ambassador to Israel, pointed out that the figures demonstrated that the effect of boycott movements on trade between the UK and Israel was minuscule. He added that one of his goals was to bring more Israeli businesses to the UK.
In 2011, the United Kingdom established a technology centre at the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, known as the UK-Israel Tech Hub, which is the only such facility sponsored by a government at its embassy in the world, to encourage cooperation between Israeli and British high-tech companies.
Tech Hub was inaugurated by George Osborne, who served as Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The centre has established the TexChange programme, which selected 15 Israeli start-ups to travel to London and gain experience in high-tech in London.
The programme also offers Israeli companies access to more markets in the United Kingdom and Europe. Tech Hub has also brought British entrepreneurs to Israel to participate in Israel's high-tech scene
