Foreign Office ‘camels,’ aides to UK PM bickered over 1995 Orient House visit

The UK Foreign Office and top aides to British prime minister John Major squabbled over whether a government minister should visit the Palestinian Liberation Organization headquarters in Jerusalem during a 1995 trip by the premier to Israel, newly released documents show.

The Foreign Office argued it was EU policy for senior officials touring Israel to visit the Orient House in East Jerusalem and that it would be a “significant departure” from accepted practice if Douglass Hogg, the minister of state for foreign affairs, did not, according to a Guardian report on the documents.

The UK Prime Minister’s Office was worried, however, that a visit by Hogg to Orient House would cloud the Israel trip, following lobbying against such a visit by British Jews.

“These Foreign Office camels never give up. I am amazed they allowed us to go to Israel at all,” Major’s private secretary Roderic Lyne was quoted writing in a Foreign Office note, in apparent reference to the “camel corps” of British diplomats in the Middle East.

Edward Oakden, another of Major’s private secretaries, said the prime minister had a “strong inclination” against the Orient House visit, as he was already set to meet with PLO chief Yasser Arafat in the Gaza Strip.

“I agree. Our highest priority is the success of the visit to Israel. We should not risk tarnishing it,” Lyne wrote in response.

“Israeli feelings about this are clearly pretty strong. And we don’t want a re-run of the row here over the status of Jerusalem. Time to stand up to the FCO’s Arabist lobby!” he added.

Lyne also reached out to the British ambassador to Israel on whether he was consulted about Hogg visiting Orient House.

“This is slightly naughty, but I am wary of camels. They may look innocuous, but they can get you into trouble,” he wrote. “This smells a bit fishy to me (can camels smell fishy?)”

Hogg did not ultimately make the trip to avoid a dust-up with Israel, according to the Guardian, with the British government officially citing prior commitments in London.