In 2017, Donald Trump controversially announced the US embassy in Israel would move to Jerusalem. Most of the world opposed it. Dodgy US allies supported it. You know the drill. But the UK decided not to back the move. Now, however, Conservative Party leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has insisted he would follow Trump’s lead if he gets a whiff of power.
In fact, he said at the Conservative conference “If the Foreign Office or the civil servants don’t want to do it, I will build it myself”. It it safe to say Jenrick is now an illegal colonialist settler, too?
Robert Jenrick: siding with racist extremists
His love of the state responsible for genocide in Gaza doesn’t stop there either. As the Independent reported, Robert Jenrick revealed that:
a small thing that I fought for when I was the immigration minister was to ensure that every Israeli citizen could enter our country through the e-gate, through the easy access.
So that at every airport and point of entry to our great country there is the Star of David there as a symbol that we support Israel, we stand with Israel.
Robert Jenrick pledges he would move British embassy to Jerusalem at Conservative Friends of Israel meeting pic.twitter.com/jRPVl7ErHI
— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 29, 2024
Jerusalem is a source of great controversy. When the UN prepared for the creation of the state of Israel, while ignoring strong local opposition to the idea, it planned for the highly important city to come under international sovereignty and control. But as the Canary previously reported, Israel:
seized western Jerusalem in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. And it then occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 war. Around 423,000 Palestinians live in Jerusalem. Nearly two thirds of them live in the areas seized by Israel in 1967.
Peace in the Middle East hinges largely on the status of Jerusalem, so making unilateral decisions as Trump did definitely don’t help.
Robert Jenrick is apparently a Trump fan, though (despite being shy about it recently). He was one of the only UK MPs who attended Trump’s inauguration in 2017. And he’s got big donors behind him.
So we shouldn’t be surprised. But we should be worried.
Featured image via the Canary
