Over 100 former British and French diplomats call for sanctions on Israel

The diplomats said Britain and France, which recognised Palestine as a state in 2025, must now act “to make common cause on the region’s fundamental fault line – equal rights for Israeli and Palestinians”. They wrote that Hamas committed “heinous crimes” on 7 October 2023, but that “nothing justifies Israel’s systematic policy of destruction of Gaza and its population”.

The letter urged seven steps, including upholding decisions by the international court of justice and international criminal court, suspending the EU-Israel association agreement and the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement, halting arms transfers and bilateral military cooperation, and insisting on unrestricted aid access to Gaza. It also called for a ban on settlement trade, warnings to E1 settlement bidders, and offences for British and French citizens buying property on stolen Palestinian land.

The letter was published two days after the UK, France and nine other countries condemned Israeli construction tenders for the E1 settlement project, saying the proposed housing “will take Israel further from peace and undermine its international standing”. UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband called tenders for 1,200 homes bisecting the West Bank a destructive threat to a two-state solution and summoned Israel’s chargée d’affaires in the UK, Daniela Grudsky Ekstein; Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar said Israel would not remain passive and that “Jewish people have a right to live throughout Israel just as British people have a right to live throughout the UK”.