The diplomatic scales are tilting towards recognition

Mark Malloch Brown describes himself as a “middle of the roader”; he’s a moderate who uses language carefully, a diplomat with an aversion to hyperbole.

- Steve Bloomfield

Yet on the question of Palestinian statehood, he now finds himself supporting something that, in his own words, “would have been a preserve of the Corbynite left”.

With more than 50 other career diplomats, Malloch Brown - a onetime deputy secretary-general of the United Nations and a Foreign Office minister under Gordon Brown - called for the UK to join with France and unconditionally recognise Palestinian statehood. The UK has long said it would support such a move only as part of a negotiations between Israel and Palestine over a two-state solution.

But the manner in which Israel has carried out its war in Gaza has dramatically changed the way Israel is perceived, says Malloch Brown.

“Israel is condemning itself to a pariah status,” he said. “The diplomatic political scales have tilted in an extraordinary way.”

At a UN conference on a two-state solution, to be held this week in New York, France and Saudi Arabia hope to build momentum towards a symbolic moment in September when at least one permanent member of the UN security council will formally back Palestinian statehood.

gathered in the same Tel Aviv square as Thursday's demonstration, their posters showing skeletal children and limp bodies contorted as they died.