A former Foreign Office official has warned that British politicians who are “trashing” the UK’s relationship with Israel risk undermining national security and economic growth.
Ameer Kotecha, who worked at the Foreign Office from 2015 to 2026, including a six-month posting at the British embassy in Tel Aviv, resigned earlier this year, publicly criticising inefficiency within the civil service.
Now in an interview with the JC, the former mandarin has said political decisions affecting Israel have weakened a partnership that plays a crucial role in keeping Britons safe.
“This government has forgotten the importance of the bilateral relationship and alliance with Israel, which helps protect the UK from terrorism,” he said.
In a wide-ranging discussion, Kotecha warned that domestic political gain had outweighed British national interests with regard to policy in the Middle East.
He said that legitimate criticism of the conduct of the government of Israel had been disproportionate and aired unhelpfully in public, damaging more effective diplomacy behind closed doors.
And he suggested the government had double-standards, applying pragmatism in its relationship with China for reasons of UK national self-interest but failing to do the same when it comes to Israel.
His views of the current state of the Foreign Office were echoed by a former UK Ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Fitton-Brown, who writing today in the JC warns of a “disastrous” shift to “world first, Britain second” and a “deeply concerning” dilution of the concept of national interest.
High-flying Oxford graduate Kotecha said: “What I found most demoralising and depressing about the whole thing is that it would be fine for this Labour government to really get across in a forceful way to the Israeli side their anger or disapproval about how the Netanyahu government is prosecuting the war in Gaza, or acting in the West Bank, however they have gone beyond that to trashing the relationship more broadly with the Israeli government.
“They have shown no real desire to keep that relationship in a healthy place, and I fear have wilfully forgotten that relationship is really important for the UK’s national security, keeping Brits here in the UK safe.”
Speaking from Westminster, weeks after leaving his post in Israel, Kotecha highlighted the intelligence sharing, counter-terrorism cooperation and technological collaboration between the UK and the Jewish state. “This is a relationship we should be investing in, not neglecting,” he said.
The 34-year-old, who worked in the private sector before joining the civil service, also pointed to missed economic opportunities, arguing that Britain had failed in recent years to engage with one of the world’s leading innovation hubs.
“National security aside, Tel Aviv is also a tech superpower. After Silicon Valley, it has one of the highest concentrations of tech unicorns anywhere in the world. It is exactly the kind of economy we should be collaborating with.
“This is a government that came in saying growth was its overriding priority. That’s hard to reconcile with how little it has done to seize the advantages of tech collaboration with Israel.”
He contrasted the UK’s approach with that of Germany. Chancellor Friedrich Merz did not follow European allies in recognising a Palestinian state last year, and Kotecha said the country had a “more balanced” stance on Israel.
Kotecha, who headed up the British Consulate in Russia between 2023 and 2025, sees a contradiction at the heart of Sir Keir Starmer’s approach to foreign policy. When travelling to Beijing and meeting President Xi in January, the prime minister stressed the importance of leader-to-leader engagement and that diplomacy was about having “difficult conversations with people we have disagreements with.”
“But he hasn’t applied that principle to Israel,” Kotecha said. “He hasn’t travelled there, and he practically never speaks to Netanyahu. He is happy to engage with the Chinese but not with one of the UK’s most important allies.”
While critical of ministers, the former civil servant praised officials on the ground, including the British ambassador to Israel, for maintaining a close relationship under difficult circumstances in the run-up to the current conflict.
He says: “The [ambassador’s] attentiveness was evident in the months leading up to the war with Iran. The ambassador was doing exactly what a good ambassador should – staying plugged into the Israeli system and feeding back what he was hearing.”
Kotecha was directly involved in implementing the UK’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood, a move he personally opposed.
He said: “Recognition was the most obvious demonstration of this government’s desire to support the Palestinian cause. But the problem has been that it pursued this at the expense of our relationship with Israel.
“Recognition at that time would have felt to Hamas like a reward for terrorism, and they would have felt vindicated. I was against it personally, but I was obliged to follow the government of the day and implement that policy.”
He said he believed the government had pursued its support for the Palestinian cause in a way that undermined Britain’s national security.
“It is entirely legitimate to criticise Israeli actions in Gaza. That is part of diplomacy. But what we’ve seen goes beyond that.”
In his view, a more balanced approach was possible. The UK could have expressed strong disagreement with Israeli policy while simultaneously reassuring Israeli leaders about the value of the bilateral relationship.
“If this government was planning on recognising Palestine, it was incumbent on them to do more with the Israeli side to reassure them that the UK still values the bilateral relationship with Israel. Even with differences on the two-state solution and Palestinian recognition, we should not regard Israel as an unfriendly country.”
But that reassurance was largely absent, “despite the best efforts of the embassy”, Kotecha added.
Direct communication between Starmer and Netanyahu has lapsed after Palestinian recognition, with the two leaders not speaking since last summer.
“The Israeli government has clearly decided to engage more with our opposition – we saw that on the ground. Richard Tice visited Jerusalem, and Gideon Sa’ar has spoken to Kemi Badenoch.”
Kotecha said he believed the problem was compounded by domestic political considerations, including pro-Palestinian voices within the Labour Party and its voters.
“We are allowing our foreign policy to be dictated by domestic political considerations and sectarian voting blocs back home. These factors are pushing us to take the hardest possible line against Israel. Among some Labour, Green and independent MPs, there is an anti-Israel sentiment, and those Labour backbenchers in particular exert real influence over ministers and government policy.”
He was critical of public ministerial statements against Israel, which he said had further damaged trust.
“Diplomacy, in my view, should be conducted primarily behind closed doors. But what we saw on Israel was ministers eager to issue public statements and tweets constantly lambasting the Israeli government. The foreign secretary could have limited those statements to private calls with Sa’ar, but instead they were public. That suggests it was for domestic political consumption rather than a genuine desire to engage constructively. The government was determined to criticise Israel in the most public way possible.”
Kotecha contrasted this with the image of Foreign Office officials at a national day event at the Iranian embassy, when staff attended a London reception celebrating the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, weeks after tens of thousands of protesters were killed by the regime.
“Diplomacy should be about speaking with people we disagree with and might even find morally repugnant. If it was a work-critical meeting with the Iranian embassy, that’s one thing – not least because they could have raised the plight of British nationals held in detention there – but it wasn’t. It was a national day event, primarily symbolic.”
In Kotecha’s view, this represented the way the Foreign Office was being distracted by matters that do little to advance Britain’s strategic goals.
“The institution is often focused on peripheral distractions instead of the core of its job: weighing up what is in the UK’s national interest and pursuing that path relentlessly. We seem to be neglecting that and have been slow to wake up to the more realist world we are living in. We are distracted by peripheral matters at the expense of serious foreign policy thinking.”
The cumulative effect was a relationship with Israel that has grown colder at a critical moment, he said. While disagreements between allies are inevitable, allowing them to define the relationship carries security risks – particular with a state so integral to Britain’s national security.
“If we had a government and foreign secretary focused on the UK’s national interest – which should be the guiding principle of our foreign policy – they would not have forgotten the importance of this relationship for national security and the safety of Brits back home.
“I would urge the government to not neglect the relationship with Israel. Israel remains an important ally.”
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