A coalition of 102 former French and British diplomats is calling on their countries to jointly sanction Israel, warning in an open letter that Israeli policy in occupied Palestinian territory threatens to permanently erase the possibility of a Palestinian state.

France and the United Kingdom “must act together to uphold international law in Palestine”, said the letter published on Saturday by French outlet Le Monde. It urged the two governments to push for “equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians”.

The signatories include former British ambassadors to the United Nations, Jeremy Greenstock and Emyr Jones Parry, and former French Middle East directors, Yves Aubin de la Messuziere and Denis Bauchard, drawing on decades of diplomatic postings across the region.

“Palestinian house demolitions and rampant settler violence – with the connivance of the Israeli army and police – amount to ethnic cleansing,” said the letter. “The world no longer sees Israel as a genuine democracy,” it added.

Such language, said Nicholas Hopton, a former UK ambassador to Iran, Qatar and Yemen and one of the signatories, was not invented by the diplomats themselves.

“The words are not our own,” he told Al Jazeera. “They are taken from the international legal bodies, the UN, those who have been observing from a neutral position and with expertise.”

The letter arrives against the backdrop of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians since October 2023. Despite a ceasefire that took effect in October 2025, Israeli attacks have continued, killing at least 1,285 Palestinians since, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

For Hopton, the more immediate trigger was Israel’s renewed push to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank.

“There is a move by the Israeli government to allow settlements to be created in the West Bank in a way that would almost realistically prevent a future Palestinian state being able to be created there,” he said.

France and the UK recognised a Palestinian state in 2025, a step the letter argues now needs to be “made real by urgent action.” The signatories trace their countries’ responsibility back to the mandates the UK and France held over Palestine, Syria and Lebanon after World War I, which shaped the region’s modern borders.

“Our two nations believe that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity must be held to account,” the letter states. “Only then can our governments rebut the accusation of double standards.”

What the diplomats demand

The letter lays out specific measures for France and the UK to adopt jointly: suspending EU-Israel and UK-Israel trade agreements and halting arms transfers and military cooperation with Israel.

It also calls for a ban on trade with Israeli settlements, a ban on citizens purchasing property on occupied Palestinian land, and guaranteed humanitarian access to Gaza through UNRWA and other UN agencies, with protected access for journalists, diplomats and parliamentarians.

“These actions, imposing penalties for law-breaking, safeguard the rule of law and show that there is an alternative to violence,” the letter states.

The letter, however, is not directed solely at Israel; it also calls on Palestinian leadership, which it describes as “unrepresentative and dysfunctional”, to ensure the internationally recognised state remains “democratic and law-abiding”, pointing to elections scheduled for November as an opportunity for renewal.

For Hopton, though, the real test lies with governments willing to act rather than simply condemn, and he singled out the United States as the most consequential actor.

“The United States … has the most influence over the actions of the Israeli government,” he told Al Jazeera, warning that continued inaction “will create a longer-term, irreconcilable problem and store up future violence and future tragedies”.