Foreign Office “camels” and senior No 10 aides were embroiled in behind-the-scenes wrangling over whether a government minister should visit a prominent Palestinian centre in Jerusalem during John Major’s 1995 tour of Israel, documents reveal.

The dispute arose over plans for the then Foreign Office minister Douglas Hogg to visit Orient House, the centre of Palestinian life in Jerusalem for more than a century, occupied by a leading PLO member, and a key political symbol of the Palestinian presence in the city.

Lobbying by the Jewish community against the visit concerned No 10, which worried that the controversy could risk the success of the trip.

The Foreign Office initially argued that EU policy was for VIPs visiting Israel to make a point of calling on Orient House in East Jerusalem, and not to do so would be a “significant departure” from standard practice.

“These Foreign Office camels never give up. I am amazed they allowed us to go to Israel at all,” Major’s principal private secretary, Roderic Lyne, wrote on one FCO briefing note, released by the National Archives. The term “camels” appears to reference the “Camel Corps” nickname for British Foreign Office officials in the Middle East.

The prime minister’s eventual “strong inclination” was for Hogg not to visit Orient House, according to a memo from the No 10 private secretary, Edward Oakden, especially as Major was already due to meet the PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, in Gaza during the visit. Lyne concurred, annotating the memo: “I agree. Our highest priority is the success of the visit to Israel. We should not risk tarnishing it.

“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!”.

Seeking advice from the UK ambassador in Tel Aviv over whether he had been consulted on the issue, Lyne wrote: “This is slightly naughty, but I am wary of camels. They may look innocuous, but they can get you into trouble.”

He added: “This smells a bit fishy to me (can camels smell fishy?)”

Hogg dropped out of the trip to defuse the row with Israel. The “line-to-take” advice to give to the press was that he had prior commitments in London. In the end a compromise was agreed with a senior FCO official, Andrew Green, making a low-key courtesy visit to Orient House.