The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, has called for Foreign Office intervention after the British Museum removed references to Palestine from its exhibits. The UK recognized the state of Palestine in September 2025, but the same year the museum removed the name 'Palestine' from a panel listing present-day countries encompassed by the ancient Levant, replacing it with Gaza and the West Bank.
Ambassador Demands Restoration
Zomlot has demanded the restoration of the term 'Palestine' and called for discussions with the museum over the removal of 'Palestine' and 'Palestinian' from explanatory panels in the ancient Levant and Egyptian rooms. He described the move as a historical 'erasure' at a time when Israel is conducting a campaign of destruction against Palestinians, which several human rights organizations and a UN independent commission have deemed genocide.
Israel has removed archaeological relics from occupied Palestinian territories and bombed the most important storage depot of ancient artefacts in Gaza City in September last year, destroying three decades of archaeological work.
Meeting with Museum Director
Zomlot was invited to meet the museum's director, Nicholas Cullinan, and some curators on 24 March but said he was given no undertaking that the changes would be reversed. Instead, he was offered a tour of the museum, which he declined. In a letter to Cullinan on 9 April, Zomlot wrote: '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.' He added he was ready to continue discussions once necessary corrections were made.
Museum's Response
The British Museum stated: 'We have not removed the term 'Palestine' from displays and continue to refer to it across a series of galleries, both contemporary and historic, and on our website.' This appeared to conflict with photographic proof of changes and earlier remarks attributed to the museum. The name Palestine does remain on some exhibits, such as maps of the ancient Middle East in the Egypt room.
Since the March meeting, Zomlot has appealed to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to intervene. The British Museum is publicly funded but run by an independent board of trustees chaired by former conservative chancellor George Osborne. The ambassador hopes the UK government will persuade the museum to align with its own recognition of Palestine.
Zomlot said: 'I sent a letter to the minister in charge in the Foreign Office, and we are waiting for a response. 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.'
A British government spokesperson said: 'Museums and galleries in the UK operate independently of the government, which means that decisions relating to the management of their collections are a matter for their trustees.'
Background of Changes
The British Museum has yet to explain the changes, which became widely known after the Telegraph reported on 14 February that they were made following concerns by a pressure group, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). UKLFI said it sent a letter to Cullinan arguing that 'several maps and descriptions retroactively apply the term 'Palestine' to periods in which no such entity existed and risk obscuring the history of Israel and the Jewish people.' The changes, however, predated the UKLFI letter, and Cullinan reportedly saw the letter only after the Telegraph story was published.
The museum has not explained its reasoning. UKLFI quoted the museum as telling the group: 'Audience testing has shown that the historic use of the term Palestine … is in some circumstances no longer meaningful.'
The word 'Palestinian' has been replaced by 'Canaanite' in a panel about the Hyksos rulers of Egypt from the 18th to the 16th centuries BC, while mention of Palestine and the Philistines has been removed from a text about the Phoenicians, who the new text says were 'locally known as Canaanites.'
Scholarly Reactions
Scholars of the ancient world have generally been skeptical about the need for a change. Canaan is mentioned frequently in the Bible but in few other contemporary inscriptions from the late Bronze Age, and when it is, it usually refers to a variety of people and places along what is now the Levantine coast. Peleset, believed to be the root of the name Palestine, appears in Egyptian inscriptions from the 12th century BC referring to a community in the Southern Levant. Before that, the most common names for the region were Djahi and Retenu. There are also later inscriptions mentioning Israel, and the kingdom of Judah is mentioned on a monument dating to the ninth century BC. Both kingdoms survived for several centuries in the Iron Age, alongside the five city states of 'Philistia,' including Gaza, which are frequently mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
Scholars say that Philistia or Palestine was the name that stuck through the centuries, and variants were used by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, persisting into the modern age.
Marchella Ward, a lecturer in classical studies at the Open University, said: 'The decision to remove Palestine has nothing to do with historical accuracy. It's no less accurate than any other term. In fact, given that it's used so frequently in historical sources rather than in biblical sources, one might say it's more accurate than other terms.'
The picture is confused by the fact that people in ancient times did not think in terms of nationalities, and the terms outsiders used to refer to a certain people or place may have nothing to do with what those people called themselves or their homeland.
Josephine Quinn, professor of ancient history at Cambridge University, argued that it was futile and distorting to portray names used thousands of years ago in the Middle East as relevant to what should happen now. Quinn said: 'The worrying thing for me is the idea that it matters, that ancient categories have any direct relevance to politics today, or that they can justify or excuse genocide in the contemporary world.'
