Research & Investigations
Palestine's ambassadors turn delegations into embassies after the recognition wave
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
For decades the brass plates read "General Delegation" or "Mission" — the vocabulary of a state the host country would not quite name. The recognition wave of 2024 and 2025 is rewriting them: when the United Kingdom recognised the State of Palestine in September 2025, the London mission was raised to a full embassy in January 2026; Paris followed in March, upgrading the Mission of Palestine to an embassy of the state France now recognises. More than 150 countries recognise Palestine today, and in each of their capitals a small staff carries the state that does not yet control its own borders. This is Times of Palestine's guide to that diplomatic corps — the most prominent ambassadors, the missions they run, and where readers anywhere in the world can find their nearest one.
The dean in New York#
The corps's face to the world is Riyad Mansour, Palestine's permanent representative at the United Nations since 2005 — two decades in which he has argued the case before the Security Council through four wars, one recognition campaign and the vote that made Palestine an observer state. Beside him rose the war's diplomatic discovery: deputy ambassador Majed Bamya, the Oslo-generation lawyer whose precise, controlled fury at Council sessions made him one of the most shared Palestinian voices of the war years. Between them, the New York mission — with its counterpart in Geneva under the veteran Ibrahim Khraishi — remains the closest thing Palestine has to a foreign ministry the whole world watches.
The embassy builders#
Husam Zomlot, head of the London mission since 2018 and a fixture of this paper's coverage, in January became ambassador of a full embassy — the first Palestinian envoy to Britain to hold the title, a hundred and eight years after the Balfour Declaration was written in the city where he now works. In Paris, Hala Abou-Hassira, envoy since 2021, saw her mission raised to an embassy in March 2026 — one of the most senior women in the corps, alongside Amal Jadou, the former deputy foreign minister who has represented Palestine to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg since 2024. In Berlin, by contrast, Laith Arafeh — ambassador since March 2022 — still heads a "General Delegation": Germany has not recognised the state, and the nameplate says so. The corps's veterans anchor the rest of the map: Diab al-Louh in Cairo, doubling as envoy to the Arab League; Abdel Hafiz Nofal in Moscow; Faed Mustafa in Ankara; Salah Abdel-Shafi, of Gaza's most famous civic family, in Vienna since 2013. And one capital marks the corps's unfinished business: Washington, where the PLO delegation was ordered shut in 2018 and no Palestinian mission has operated since.
The directory#
The table below lists principal missions by country, with the head of mission where the public record clearly establishes one; a dash means the post is in transition or the record is unclear, and this page will be corrected as embassies confirm details — missions and readers can send updates through this newspaper's tip line. Full addresses, phone numbers and consular contacts are maintained by each mission and by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' missions directory at mfa.ps, and the UN mission publishes its work at palestineun.org.
| Country / body | Mission | Head of mission | City |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Nations | Permanent Mission | Riyad Mansour (since 2005) | New York |
| UN Geneva | Permanent Mission | Ibrahim Khraishi | Geneva |
| United Kingdom | Embassy (since Jan 2026) | Husam Zomlot | London |
| France | Embassy (since Mar 2026) | Hala Abou-Hassira | Paris |
| European Union | Mission (also Belgium, Luxembourg) | Amal Jadou | Brussels |
| Germany | General Delegation | Laith Arafeh | Berlin |
| Austria / UN Vienna | Embassy & Permanent Mission | Salah Abdel-Shafi | Vienna |
| Egypt / Arab League | Embassy & Delegation | Diab al-Louh | Cairo |
| Jordan | Embassy | — | Amman |
| Saudi Arabia | Embassy | — | Riyadh |
| Qatar | Embassy | — | Doha |
| United Arab Emirates | Embassy | — | Abu Dhabi |
| Türkiye | Embassy | Faed Mustafa | Ankara |
| Russia | Embassy | Abdel Hafiz Nofal | Moscow |
| China | Embassy | — | Beijing |
| India | Embassy | — | New Delhi |
| Japan | General Delegation | — | Tokyo |
| Spain | Embassy | — | Madrid |
| Ireland | Embassy | — | Dublin |
| Brazil | Embassy | — | Brasília |
| Chile | Embassy | — | Santiago |
| South Africa | Embassy | — | Pretoria |
| United States | None — delegation closed 2018 | — | — |
What the plates' new wording records is not protocol trivia. An embassy can issue documents a delegation cannot, claim standing a mission cannot, and speak in a capital's diplomatic register as an equal. Every upgraded nameplate is a fact created on the ground of international law while the ground of Palestine itself remains contested — and the men and women in this directory are, between them, the custodians of the most successful Palestinian campaign of the decade: the one measured in recognitions, not ruins. Times of Palestine will keep this directory current as embassies open, upgrade and change hands.
