Powell's undisclosed Israel trip fails to save the East Jerusalem consulate before Thursday

Britain's national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, went to Israel last week to try to keep the East Jerusalem consulate open, three sources told Reuters. He did not get an agreement. The talks are still going. The 30-day closure order runs out on Thursday, 8 October.

Israel issued the order on 8 September, after London said it would ban goods made in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. France and Canada joined those sanctions. The order told Britain to close the consulate within 30 days and to remove its diplomats from the city. The British government has not announced Powell's trip. Reuters said the sources spoke on condition of anonymity, and that two of them thought a deal to keep the consulate open was still possible, and unlikely before Thursday.

The consulate is not the embassy. The embassy, in Tel Aviv, handles relations with Israel. The East Jerusalem consulate handles political and consular work for Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Closing it would end a British mission that predates the embassy arrangement and that London treats as its channel to Palestinian institutions. Israel rejects that distinction and has long argued that foreign consulates in East Jerusalem prejudice the status of the city.

Al Jazeera, citing the Israeli outlet Ynet, reported on Monday that Britain's ambassador, Simon Walters, had warned Israeli officials of a reciprocal step: one Israeli diplomat expelled for each of 27 British diplomats who would lose status if the consulate shut. Al Jazeera described the Ynet account as unverified. Reuters did not carry the figure 27 or the expulsion threat. Until London or Jerusalem confirms it, the threat sits as an Israeli media report, not as British policy.

The deadline is the hard fact. Thursday is three days from the Reuters dispatch and two days from this morning in Jerusalem. A consulate cannot be unwound in an afternoon without a plan for visas, passports, and the Palestinian political contacts that currently run through the building. Two of the Reuters sources said talks had not ended. They also said they did not expect a deal in time. That combination usually means a temporary extension, a partial closure, or a closure followed by a loud row. None of the three has been announced.

The sanctions that produced the order are a goods ban, not a diplomatic break. Settlement products already face restrictions in several European markets. Israel's answer was to put a clock on a building. Powell's job last week was to trade something for that clock. The sources did not say what he offered. They said he left without a yes.

If the consulate closes on Thursday, Britain loses its separate Palestinian post and Israel keeps the sanction on settlement goods, unless a later bargain joins the two files. If it stays open, Israel will have walked back a 30-day order under pressure from a security adviser whose visit London has not admitted. Either result will be visible by the end of the week. The middle outcome, an extension that neither side calls a climbdown, is the one the sources left open and declined to bet on.