BBC:
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper says she has warned Israel not to annex parts of the West Bank in retaliation for the UK’s recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Cooper was speaking to the BBC before attending a conference on Monday at the UN in New York where France and other European states are due to make a similar announcement.
In what was a significant change in policy, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state on Sunday, along with Canada, Australia and Portugal.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the moves, saying they give “a huge reward to terrorism”.
Asked by the BBC if she was concerned Israel would take this declaration as a pretext for annexing parts of the West Bank, Cooper said she had made it clear to her Israeli counterpart that he and his government must not do that.
She said: “We have been clear that this decision that we are taking is about the best way to respect the security for Israel as well as the security for Palestinians.
“It’s about protecting peace and justice and crucially security for the Middle East and we will continue to work with everyone across the region in order to be able to do that.”
Cooper said extremists on both sides were seeking to abandon any prospect of a two-state solution, which the UK had a moral obligation to revive.
“The easy thing to do would be to just walk away and to say well it is all just too hard,” Cooper said. “We just think that is wrong when we’ve seen such devastation, such suffering.
“Just as we recognise Israel, the state of Israel … so we must also recognise the rights for the Palestinians to a state of their own as well.”
She did not say when the UK’s Consulate General in East Jerusalem would become a full embassy, saying it would continue while a diplomatic process began with the Palestinian Authority.
