In his interview with Sky News this morning, Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, said that he regretted the fact that Israel is ordering the UK to close its consulate in Jerusalem in response to the UK sanctions. But he said the government had weighed up “the costs and benefits” of its move in advance. I regret what the Israeli government has announced, but I’m proud of what we did yesterday and it was the right thing to do.
It will be damaging, that’s true, but we weighed up the costs and the benefits in advance of this. And we did something very important. We talked to the representatives of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian prime minister, the representative here, and they both said to us with a very clear voice, you need to act from our point of view.
I would prefer that Israel hadn’t announced what it did, but overall, I strongly believe that what we did, along with other international allies, was absolutely the right thing to do.
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