Ambassador: Parliament becoming More Anti-Israel

British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, said Sunday that Israel and Britain are engaged in “unprecedented” cooperation to make sure Iran does not acquire nuclear arms. He also warned, however, that Britain's parliament is becoming increasingly anti-Israel as time goes by. 

"We have no doubt now that Iran is doing all that it can in order to achieve nuclear capability,” Gould said in a speech at Haifa University.

"A nuclear-armed Iran is catastrophic not just for Israel but for the entire world, and therefore, Britain is just as determined as Israel to prevent such a move from taking place, and the degree of behind the scenes cooperation between Britain and Israel is unprecedented.”

Gould stressed numerous times in his speech that Britain is aware of Israel's concern and that it realizes that the concern is justified.

He said that Britain is determined to cooperate with Israel against terror, and noted that Britain itself has been hit by terror – from the days of the past struggle with the IRA, to the recent murder of a soldier on a London street.

While turmoil in the Arab world, and especially the Syrian civil war, make Israel's concerns even more pressing, he said, they also strengthen Britain's conviction that there needs to be “a two-state solution.”

Gould said that the “occupation” of Judea and Samaria is causing a decline in Israel's international standing. “I see how the British parliament is becoming more and more critical of Israel, and as time passes, this will get worse,” he predicted.

Gould criticized physicist Stephen Hawking's declaration that he was joining the boycott of Israel. Boycotts “are not the way to build trust,” he said.