Why More Than 100 Former Diplomats Are Calling for an Arms Ban on Israel
More than 100 former diplomats from France and Britain have signed a letter accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and asking their governments to stop selling weapons to Israel and to cut trade until Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state. The letter was sent to French president Emmanuel Macron and British prime minister Andy Burnham, and was published on 22 August 2026 by the Guardian and Le Monde newspapers The Guardian.
The people who signed include 52 former French diplomats and 50 former British ambassadors. Some are well-known figures in international diplomacy, such as Jeremy Greenstock and Emyr Jones Parry, who both served as United Nations envoys, and Edward Chaplin, who once directed Middle East policy at the British Foreign Office. On the French side, signatories include Patrice Paoli, a former Middle East director at the French foreign ministry, and Stanislas de Laboulaye, a former consul general in Jerusalem The Guardian. These are people who spent their careers managing their countries' relationships in the Middle East. Their experience gives the letter more weight than a typical public petition.
The letter came two days after a group of countries took an unusual step together. On 20 August 2026, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, and Norway issued a joint statement condemning Israel's plan to build 1,200 new housing units in a settlement area called E1, located east of Jerusalem UK Government. Settlements are communities built by Israel in the West Bank, territory that most of the world considers occupied Palestinian land. The E1 area is considered especially important because building there would connect Israeli settlements in a way that could make it very difficult for a future Palestinian state to exist as a single, connected piece of land.
UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband called the E1 construction plans a threat to the possibility of a two-state solution, the idea that Israelis and Palestinians should each have their own country. He then summoned the most senior Israeli diplomat in the UK, Daniela Grudsky Ekstein The Guardian. Summoning a diplomat is a formal way for a government to show serious displeasure, but it does not cut off relations.
Israel pushed back firmly. Foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar said Israel would not stay passive and that the Jewish people have a right to live throughout Israel The Guardian. Israel also rejected a new 15-point peace plan for Gaza led by the United States. That rejection drew criticism from eight Muslim-majority countries, including the United Arab Emirates The Guardian. The UAE's criticism is notable because it normalised relations with Israel in 2020 under an agreement called the Abraham Accords. When even a country that made peace with Israel publicly criticises it, that suggests Israel is facing pressure from many directions at once.
France has also been speaking out on its own. In August 2026, France again condemned Israeli settlement policy, specifically calling out Israeli settlers who took over Palestinian homes in the West Bank village of Qusra and the violence against residents there French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.
The diplomats' letter also fits into a bigger change in European policy over the past year. In 2025, both Britain and France officially recognised Palestine as a state The Guardian. That recognition was mostly symbolic, but it showed a willingness to step away from the old Western approach of saying Palestinians could only have a state if they negotiated one with Israel first. The diplomats' letter goes further, asking for real economic pressure through trade and arms bans.
The broader picture is that European countries are rethinking their relationship with Israel at a time when Israel's policies on settlements and Gaza seem to be getting harder, not softer, despite international criticism. The diplomats' letter does not change any laws or policies by itself. But over a hundred career diplomats, including people who once worked at the highest levels of the United Nations and in major peace negotiations, publicly using the term ethnic cleansing and calling for arms sanctions is a clear step up in how seriously European officials are talking about Israel. Whether Macron and Burnham will turn that pressure into actual policy depends on things the letter does not address: how to manage their alliance with the United States, what their own voters will accept, and whether economic pressure can change Israel's decisions when diplomatic criticism has not.
