ISRAEL SHUTS BRITAIN’S EAST JERUSALEM CONSULATE.
Saar cuts the PA-accredited mission and pulls the UK from the U.S.-led Gaza coordination file.
Desk file · 8 SEP 2026 · 15:00 GMT
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday, 8 September, that Israel is closing Britain’s consulate in East Jerusalem. The mission is accredited to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. That is the file.
Saar said the cut was the answer to London’s ban on goods from Israeli settlements. He said he had coordinated the response with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The desk logs the attribution. It does not write the speech.
Britain will no longer take part in the U.S.-led coordination mission for Gaza inside Israel, Saar said. He also said British training of Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank would be terminated, and that some elected UK officials and other nationals would be barred from entering Israel.
Reuters quoted Saar calling the British package morally distorted and interference in a sovereign state’s affairs and electoral process. Israel holds an election in late October. London’s ban was announced in the Commons the same day, with France and Canada moving in parallel.
The consulate is Britain’s main diplomatic door to the Palestinians. Closing it is a diplomatic cut, not a trade tally. Saar named Britain. The settlement-goods ban was the trigger on the wire.
Filed from wires: Reuters, 8 September 2026. NTH MERIDIAN does not invent counts. DESK_ID 20260909-politics-israel-uk-consulate.
