Far from London's marbled halls of power, the crowd cheered as Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot addressed the Durham Miner’s Gala this summer.
The annual gathering is one of the largest labour festivals and a celebration of the UK’s mining heritage, and Mr Zomlot delivered what was described by organisers as one of its “most powerful speeches” in 139 years.
“The British people have turned this country into the epicentre of support for Palestine,” he said. “And with Palestine, I thank you.”
As the UK recognises Palestinian statehood, the Gaza-born diplomat and Harvard graduate is about to gain a formal upgrade in status.
Keir Starmer announced the recognition decision on Sunday alongside the leaders of Australia and Canada. The countries are joining a 10-strong group of countries led by France in making the declaration formal at a summit at the UN on Monday.
Mr Zomlot's future role as fully fledged member of the diplomatic corps is unlikely to see him pack up his activism.
It is public sentiment on Palestine, he insists, that will drive politicians to change course.
Mr Zomlot, who can recall being chased by Israeli soldiers through the Strip's Jabalia camp when he was a child during the First Intifada, considers the popular movement for Palestine to be a key pressure point in the UK – often linking it to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the civil rights movement in the US.
The mission's upgrade to an embassy will be automatic – but a date for the formal protocol has not been set, and it will continue operating from its Hammersmith premises for now.
Before his posting to the UK, Mr Zomlot served as head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation mission to the US that was closed by President Donald Trump's administration in 2018.
Since his arrival, the envoy has been active in London’s political and diplomatic circles.
He regularly meets UK Foreign Office ministers, being described as a “good friend” by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Where opinion leaders gather he is a familiar face, and the ambassador is regularly hosted to speak by the Arab embassies in London.
A suit and a keffiyeh
Mr Zomlot is one of three ambassadors the PLO has sent to London over 35 years, who have sought to build bridges with the UK’s political establishment, while cultivating the grass roots movement for a Palestine state.
Afif Safieh, who served from 1990 to 2005, is often credited for the custom of referring to Palestine’s envoy in London as ambassador – an unofficial title given that the outpost did not have the status of an embassy.
For many, Mr Safieh represented a new generation of the PLO. Known for his eloquence, he led the Palestinian delegation during the Oslo Accords, and when it was recognised by the UK government in 1993.
In 2003, he represented Palestine at a milestone London conference on Palestinian reform, led by then foreign secretary Jack Straw and prime minister Tony Blair, as part of the Madrid Quartet process.
He was the sole member of the delegation, after Palestinian officials had been banned by Israel from travelling to the UK for the conference and joined by conference call.
“The brilliant way in which Afif Safieh would play with words was much better than giving a heavy-handed top-down lecture. People would smile and pay attention,” remembers Harry Hagopian, a legal adviser, who is a member of the Palestinian community in London.
Most famously, Mr Safieh described Palestinians as being “unreasonably reasonable” in their peace negotiations with Israel, offering concessions and land in exchange for peace and an end to the occupation. He also accused the international community of seeking an “everlasting peace process” over “everlasting peace” in their discussions of the conflict.
During his tenure in London, Mr Safieh also served as a representative of Palestine to the Holy See, and had a good relationship with the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, the city of his birth. “He was a prominent member of the PLO who was a Christian. These are optics that were very important at the time. It reflected the secular reality of Palestine,” Mr Hagopian said.
Key to the Palestinian Mission's success over the years has been the support it received from prominent British Palestinians.
Judge Eugene Cotran, BBC Arabic broadcaster Said Al Karmi, and criminal barrister Michel Abdel Massih KC among others all played a role in integrating Palestinian diplomats into London's political and public life.
By the time of his successor, Manuel Hassassian, the needs of the delegation had evolved. “Hassassian was more of an activist,” Mr Hagopian recalled. He joined the Palestine Solidarity Campaign protests, spoke at student unions, and made regular TV appearances in UK media.
He also broke with Mr Safieh's impeccable formality by occasionally wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh.
An academic by training, Mr Hassassian often emphasised the deep-seated psychological factors of the conflict, which he lamented that diplomats and mediators overlooked. “It’s a conflict … between two nationalisms that have come across at loggerheads from the 19th century carrying on to the 21st century,” he said at the Oxford Union on 2015.
The delegation was upgraded to a mission in 2011, after UK Foreign Secretary William Hague acknowledged the growing collaboration between the UK and the Palestinian authority.
Mr Hassassian was there in 2014, when UK MPs voted to recognise a Palestinian state, describing the vote as “momentous” – despite its symbolic nature that did not change the government’s policy.
In 2017, when US President Trump announced he would move the US embassy to Jerusalem, Mr Hassassian accused him of “declaring war in the Middle East.”
His late wife Samira Hassassian successfully campaigned for a Palestinian stall to be allowed at the annual diplomatic charity fair in Kensington after hearing that the Town Hall would not allow a Palestinian presence. In 2007, the fair opened with Palestinian dancers.
Trauma insights
To the French public, diplomat Hala Abou Hassira became the face of the war in Gaza while documenting her family’s ordeals on social media.
She has shared the joy of being able to reach her mother on the phone after long periods of silence – “Habibti Mama! These atrocities will end and you will be stronger than ever”- and of the “tens of cousins” who were killed by Israeli air strikes last year.
But she found that sharing her personal experiences was causing unhealthy and often intrusive public curiosity. “It triggered interest and sympathy from public opinion and French media,” she said. “Gaza was identified with a person in flesh and blood – and that was me.”
Like her colleagues in London, she seeks to strike a balance between diplomacy and activism.
When French daily Liberation described her as a representative of a new generation of technocratic Palestinian diplomats – she rejected it.
“I’m not 100 per cent an activist and I’m not 100 per cent a technocrat. I’m a mix of everything,” she said. “I am a Palestinian who grew under occupation, lived through it and like the majority of the Palestinian youth, I invested in education to empower myself and serve the just cause of my people.”
The French have broad knowledge about, and a particular sensibility to, the Palestinian cause, she said. “It finds echoes with principles of human rights that were founded by France, as well as with the global era of the decolonisation movement,” she added, referring to France's former colonies in the Middle East and Africa.
Past French presidents such as Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac cultivated reputations as statesmen, unafraid to remind Israel of its obligations under international law, she said.
Incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, who first supported Israel's war in Gaza, became among the first of Israel's close allies to criticise it and has led the latest recognition efforts.
Ms Abou Hassira’s love of French culture grew at the French Institute in Gaza. She first arrived in Paris in 2007 to serve as a political adviser to the delegation there.
Palestinian diplomats have long been welcomed by their French counterparts, she said, as they carried their fight for statehood recognition.
Double act
The diplomatic presence in Paris was forged by Palestinians who had been embedded with the city's cultural elite as students in the 1970s, when the Palestinian Liberation Organisation still had an armed resistance movement.
Leila Shahid, who served in Paris as Palestine's first female diplomat from 1993 to 2006 had travelled with French novelist Jean Genet to Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, after the 1982 massacre.
For years, until the Palestinian delegation was upgraded to a mission in 2010, Ms Shahid was forced to sit at the back row of diplomats during events at the Elysee.
Elias Sanbar, who oversaw Palestine's integration into Unesco as ambassador from 2006 to 2022, introduced French film maker Jean-Luc Godard to Palestinian revolutionaries in Jordan.
Ms Abou Hassira paid tribute to her predecessors at the Institut du Monde Arabe this week.
“In a few days, France will recognise the State of Palestine and I know that this was a fight that you carried for decades,” Ms Abou Hassira said. “You carried the voice of the Palestinian people.”
Together, Ms Shahid's eloquence and Mr Sanbar's “encyclopaedic” knowledge made them a “great diplomatic duo” in Paris, according to Muzna Shihabi, a former adviser to the PLO based in Paris.
“Everything hinges on individuals – remarkable, multilingual, internationally trained personalities – that remain rooted in their history and carry their cause with their voices, their networks, and their personal credibility,” she said.
Trailblazing colleague
By the time of Norway’s recognition in May 2024, the Palestinian Mission had been so well established that the changes appeared merely linguistic.
For ambassador Marie-Antoinette Sedin, who was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon, the most significant change came in three letters: PSE. The international code for Palestine now appeared on her Norwegian residency card, instead of XXX – which previously detailed Ms Sedin's stateless status.
“It gives us a deep feeling – like you are accepted as normal human being with Palestinian background,” Ms Sedin told The National. “I feel like I’m welcomed. I’m treated on the same level of my colleagues.”
And as she stood beside King Harald V of Norway to deliver a speech in Oslo Cathedral in January of this year, months after the recognition, she thought of her first posting as a diplomat to neighbouring Sweden in the early 1980s.
Palestinians then were called terrorists, she told The National recalling how she was treated in Stockholm “like a sick person they wanted to avoid to get in contact with”.
For Ms Abou Hassira, recognition from a permanent member of the Security Council is as much about the message it sends to the world, as it is about the practical changes. “It’ll send a very strong message: injustice against Palestinians has to stop. Like all people, the Palestinian people must obtain their inalienable right to self-determination.”
All the envoys demand sanctions on Israel as a means to bring about a two state solution. “That means an embargo on weapons and political and diplomatic sanctions on Israel until it accepts to abide by international law,” said Ms Abou Hassira.
The need to campaign until the end of their mandates remains the guiding principle for all the envoys whatever their status.
