Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has voiced his worry of negative “impact” if the UK relocates its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem.
“The Archbishop is concerned about the potential impact of moving the British Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before a negotiated settlement between Palestinians and Israelis has been reached,” reads a statement released to Jewish News on Friday by Archbishop Welby’s spokesperson.
“He is in touch with Christian leaders in the Holy Land and continues to pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” the statement concludes.
In expressing his misgivings over a possible transfer of the embassy, Welby joins a growing chorus of political parties and religious leaders expressing similar concern.
As Breitbart News reported, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, wrote to Prime Minister Liz Truss Thursday encouraging her not to move the U.K.’s embassy to Jerusalem.
Malawi announced Saturday that it would open an embassy in Jerusalem, making it the third country to do so over the weekend. https://t.co/xm47gWNEX1
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) September 7, 2020
In the letter, Nichols expressed his “profound concern” over Truss’s call for a review of the location of the British Embassy to the State of Israel, with the suggestion that it might be moved away from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Such a relocation of the U.K. Embassy would be “seriously damaging” to any possibility of lasting peace in the region as well as to “the international reputation of the United Kingdom,” the cardinal asserted.
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— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 22, 2021
Nichols said that Pope Francis and the leaders of churches in the Holy Land “have long called for the international Status Quo on Jerusalem to be upheld,” in accord with U.N. resolutions on the issue.
I can see “no valid reason” to consider such a move at the moment, the cardinal declared, while “earnestly” urging the prime minister “to reconsider the intention she has expressed and to focus all efforts on seeking a two-state solution, in which Jerusalem would have a guaranteed special status.”
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