Palestine ambassador urges government to intervene in British Museum’s removal of Palestine
The British Museum
The New Arab reports on 6 May 2026:
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom has asked the Foreign Office to intervene in the British Museum’s removal of references to Palestine from exhibits in response to pressure from pro-Israel groups.
References to ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinian’ were removed last year from some displays and replaced with ‘Gaza’ and the ‘West Bank’, causing outrage among staff and the public.
Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot highlighted the significance of the Museum’s actions, particularly at a time when Israel is waging war on the Palestinian territories – one deemed to be a genocide by UN experts and leading human rights groups.
“I sent a letter to the minister in charge in the Foreign Office, and we are waiting for [a response]” Zomlot said. “For me, this is not only a political issue. This is not only a legal issue. This is not even just a historical issue. This is an existential issue. Because erasing our past is erasing our present,” Zomlot was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
However, the government appears unwilling to get involved in the dispute.
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In March, Zomlot declined an invite by the museum’s director, Nicholas Cullinan, for a tour of the museum, which was offered without assurances that the changes to the exhibits would be reversed.
“In the absence of corrective action, or a clear commitment to address the issues identified, it would not have been appropriate to engage further in a manner that could be interpreted as an endorsement of the current presentation,” Zomlot wrote to Cullinan in April, in a letter seen by The Guardian and New Lines Magazine.