Politics & Diplomacy
A hundred French and British ex-ambassadors demand their governments sanction Israel
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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More than a hundred former senior diplomats of France and Britain told their governments on Saturday that recognizing Palestine is not enough — and demanded trade restrictions on Israel, an end to arms transfers and military cooperation, and penalties on the companies and individuals building the settlements.
The joint letter carries 52 French and 50 British signatures, France 24 reported — among them Jeremy Greenstock and Emyr Jones Parry, who represented Britain at the United Nations, and Yves Aubin de la Messuzière and Denis Bauchard, who ran the Middle East desk at the French foreign ministry.
Careers spent defending both states' policies now sit behind a single accusation: Israel is working to destroy any prospect of a viable Palestinian state.
Palestinian house demolitions and rampant settler violence — with the connivance of the Israeli army and police — amount to ethnic cleansing.
The former ambassadors' joint letter, published 22 August
The signatories chose the two capitals that moved first among Western powers on recognition, and their argument lands precisely there: recognition without enforcement leaves the recognized state to be erased on the ground. What they ask for is the machinery states actually use when they mean it — trade, arms, and the ledgers of the companies profiting from occupied land.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa welcomed the intervention the same day. Neither the Élysée nor the Foreign Office had answered the letter's demands by Saturday evening.
For readers keeping the count: the demolitions and settler violence the letter names are the ones this paper documents daily — Qusra's siege now past its second week among them.
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