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.
“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,” a government spokesperson was quoted as saying by the London-based newspaper.
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. Zomlot said he was open to continuing talks and would welcome a tour "once the necessary corrections have been made".
The British Museum has denied removing the term 'Palestine' from its exhibits and website, though this claim appears to contradict photographic evidence taken by visitors.
The changes to the exhibits caught public attention after a report from The Telegraph on 14 February, which said that the changes were made after complaints by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).
UKLFI wrote to Cullinan saying 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".
Cullinan, however, reportedly only saw the letter after the changes were made.
According to UKLFI, the museum wrote to the pro-Israel group saying: "Audience testing has shown that the historic use of the term Palestine … is in some circumstances no longer meaningful."
UKLFI has previously been involved in several controversial moves involving UK public bodies, including the removal of artwork drawn by children from Gaza from the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.
Jewish patients at the hospital claimed that the drawings made them feel "vulnerable, victimised and harassed", according to reports at the time.
Pro-Palestine advocates argue that the British Museum's removal of the Palestine adds to the erasure of Palestinian identity - a policy pushed by Israel and its advocates around the world.
Pro-Israel figures have long argued against the existence of a Palestinian people, in an attempt to justify the continued expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. This includes the propagation of the slogan "a land without people for a people without land" - one which was popularised by Zionists in the 19th century as a rallying call for the usurpation of Palestinian land.
In the occupied Palestinian territories and what is now modern Israel, Israeli authorities have carried out numerous excavations in a bid to 'Judaiaise' the history of the region. These excavations have resulted in the destruction of historical artefacts and threaten the foundations of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.
Jewish extremist groups have called for the outright destruction of non-Jewish historical and holy sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque .
At the same time, Israeli military strikes have destroyed non-Jewish historical sites in the region, including in the ongoing war on Gaza.
In late 2025, Gaza's Government Media Office reported that more than 20,000 rare artefacts, spanning from prehistoric times to the Ottoman period, were reported missing or looted during the Israeli assault on the Palestinian enclave.