A powerful coalition of British and French former diplomats is demanding a ban on arms transfers and a freeze on EU-Israel and UK-Israel trade agreements.

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 last week 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........

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