WarSclerotic

On the face of it the Anglo-Israel relationship has never been stronger. In 2012, UK-Israel bilateral trade reached an annual all-time high of £3.81 billion [NIS 21 billion]; a remarkable 60 percent increase in just a decade. Alongside the burgeoning trade relationship, intelligence sharing between the two countries is also at its peak, particularly on the issue of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

But the relationship between the Jewish State and its former Mandate ruler has been known to run both hot and cold. While British Prime Minister David Cameron publicly calls the UK a ‘strong friend of Israel’ and bilateral ties in trade and technology are on the rise, diplomatic and the political relationships can be more strained.

This all comes down to one thing: the deeply entrenched scepticism that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) displays towards Israel. Israeli settlement activity has been singled out as the cause of aggression by some, but it is really only one small part of a wider problem that the FCO appears to have with Israel.

This past week, the Foreign Office has confirmed many suspicions about its impartiality and added to the feeling that it does not approach the Middle East Conflict with an even hand.

Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister for Faith and Communities, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, responded to a Written Parliamentary Question from the now notoriously anti-Israel Baroness Jenny Tonge about the number of Palestinians that have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza since 2002. Warsi’s answer gave the figure of 3,643 since 2012; a dramatic over-estimation on the correct number of 275, as confirmed by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

An FCO spokesperson has now said the mistake was a ‘clerical error’ and that the figure given should have stated that it was from 2005 not 2012. But that was it. No official correction on the Parliamentary record, no apology for the damage caused to Israel’s reputation, and no concern for their own processes which determine whether they could be relied upon as an accurate and balanced source of information for British decision makers.

Hostility from within the FCO can be traced as far back as to the early days of the State of Israel, when in 1953 the FCO refused a request made by the newly formed Jewish state to transfer the (British) Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. The British government cited that such a move would be impossible as Britain did not recognise Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.

The British Monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, has made over 250 official visits to over 125 different countries around the world during her reign. But the FCO’s tight control over British Royal visits has meant that neither she nor any other member of Britain’s Royal family has ever visited Israel in an official capacity. And it’s not as if she was never in the area on an official visit.

Having visited Libya, Iran, Sudan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey and many other countries and territories, the absence of a visit to Israel amounts to an effective boycott of the Middle East’s only fully functioning democracy.

Evidence for the Foreign Office’s oft-noted inherent “Arabism” is plentiful. In yet another example, leaked documents from within the British government accused Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of blaming the Palestinian Authority for inciting hatred of Israel as some sort of diplomatic strategy, diminishing the seriousness of incitement to terrorism, and exposing a concerning bias about Netanyahu’s intentions. According to officials, “The history of this issue suggests that Netanyahu administrations have a tendency to charge the PA/PLO with incitement as a delaying tactic in peace talks.”

The issue of settlement building has become the trump card in the FCO’s anti-Israel deck. Settlements were named as one of the reasons Israel was marked as a country of “concern” with regards to human rights and democracy by the FCO. By contrast, the organization’s report on human rights violations in Iran was half the length of the section dedicated to Israel and its role in the Middle East conflict.

These incidents are numerous, constant, and will no doubt continue apace until policy makers start to call out the FCO on its institutional bias. Some British Members of Parliament are active in this process, but more ought to be involved from Britain, and indeed so too should the Knesset.

With more scrutiny, more diligence, and more exposure, these issues can be stamped out in the medium-term. It is absolutely crucial that as allies, we work together, not apart, and certainly not against one another.

Tanyah Murkes is the Israel Liaison of Conservative Friends of Israel

Nathalie Tamam is the Political Director of Conservative Friends of Israel