‘We have already moved the commercial department of our Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem years ago’
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban would back his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu by moving its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem next month, Israeli media reported Friday.
If the plan goes through, Hungary would be the first European Union member state to establish an embassy in Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital but is not acknowledged by most nations and whose legal status is in question.
Hungarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mate Paczolay did not confirm The Times of Israel’s report, but said the ministry would provide updates on any changes to the embassy in all cases.
“We have already moved the commercial department of our Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem years ago,” he said in response to a Reuters question. “The inauguration of the foreign trade representation was jointly announced by Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Only a small number of other nations have followed the United States in moving its embassies in Israel to Jerusalem under the administration of former president Donald Trump in 2018.
Jerusalem was proclaimed to be Israel’s capital city by a law passed by the Israeli parliament in 1980. Unless discussions between Israel and the Palestinians, who want east Jerusalem to serve as the capital of a future Palestinian state, are concluded, the United Nations will consider east Jerusalem occupied and its status disputed.
