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Husam Said Zomlot (, born 31 August 1973) is a Palestinian diplomat, academic and economist. He was appointed Head of the Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom in October 2018. Palestine’s new ambassador in London wants to reclaim the narrative for his people, Middle East Monitor, 10 November 2018 Before his posting to the UK, he served as head of the PLO mission to the United States Palestine’s man in Washington, Politico, 31 March 2017 that was closed by President Donald Trump's administration.
Zomlot is a senior member of Fatah, the main Palestinian political movement, and a strategic adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He previously served as director of Fatah's commission for foreign relations.
Before entering politics, Zomlot was a professor of public policy at Birzeit University. He was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University in the US and an instructor at the University of London. He also worked as an economist with United Nations Special Coordinator's Office in Palestine.
Zomlot became politically active while taking his undergraduate degree at Birzeit University outside Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. There he became a representative of Fatah’s student movement at the university during the First Intifada.
In 1999, while studying in London, he was elected as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students in the UK.
In 2000, he completed a master's degree in development studies at the London School of Economics (LSE). Chevening changemakers, Chevening, retrieved 23 April 2020 He received his PhD in International Political Economy from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London in 2007. Graduate destinations , SOAS, London, Retrieved 23 April 2020
Before joining Birzeit as professor of public policy in 2012 he was Scholar in Residence at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government (2008–2010). Uniting Research and Policy, The Peearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, Retrieved 23 April 2020
He was appointed ambassador-at-large for the State of Palestine that same year, and also served as director of Fatah's commission for foreign relations.
He became strategic adviser to President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas in 2015 before being elected to Fatah's Revolutionary Council in 2016.
In 2017, Zomlot was appointed as envoy to the United States, taking over from Maen Rashid Areikat.
His tenure there was cut short after the Trump administration decided to close the PLO mission in Washington DC and subsequently recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital. In December 2017, the White House announced its intention to move the US embassy to Israel to the city from Tel Aviv. The Palestinian leadership countered by boycotting ties with the US administration. Why the Palestinians Are Boycotting the Trump Administration, The New Yorker, 21 January 2018
In 2018, Zomlot was appointed Head of Mission to the United Kingdom.
But efforts came to a halt when the White House in November 2017 informed Zomlot of its intention to close the PLO mission in Washington DC and in December announced its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and plans to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. The move undermines a significant Palestinian policy that the eastern part of the city, occupied by Israel in 1967, should eventually serve as the capital of Palestine.
The announcement sparked protests in the occupied Palestinian areas. A spokesperson for Fatah said it would move for the US to be disqualified as co-sponsor of any peace process or political process. Trump Jerusalem move sparks Israeli-Palestinian clashes, BBC 7 December 2017
Said Zomlot at the time: "You didn’t take Jerusalem off the table. You took the table altogether. No one, no Palestinian, would ever be able to sit on that table. Good luck!"
In September 2018, the PLO's representative mission in Washington, D.C., was closed but by then Zomlot had already been recalled to Ramallah. Can the Palestinian Ambassador to the US survive the Trump era, Moment Magazine, 7 June 2018 As a result, what would eventually become the Trump Peace to Prosperity plan for peace between Israelis and Palestinians was developed only with input from Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli government.
Zomlot nevertheless argued that a recalibration of Palestinian-US relations could have three positive outcomes: "it frees the Palestinians from the shackles of a failed 27-year-old, American-led peace process… it provides an opportunity to repeal a 1987 law designating the Palestine Liberation Organization as a terrorist organization… it will help redirect Palestinian attention to long-term engagement directly with the American people". Trump Is Giving Palestinians a Choice. We’ll Choose Dignity. The New York Times, 25 September 2018
Since his appointment, bilateral Palestinian-British relations have deepened. In spite of US administration moves to defund both the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, British aid to both has continued (and doubled in the case of UNRWA) UK continues to be among top donors to UNRWA, Foreign and Commonwealth 25 June 2019 while the British government continues to support a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as mandated by international law.
As ambassador, he criticised the Israeli government during the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis.
In 2023, Sky News issued a public apology after presenter Kay Burley had falsely quoted Zomlot as saying "Israel had it coming" multiple times in regards to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel which gave a misleading impression that he believed they deserved it. His actual quote was:
In February 2024, BBC Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark interviewed Zomlot, a politician with no links to Hamas. Zomlot described how six of his wife's family members had been killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip during the Gaza war.
The General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) in the UK accused Zomlot of appointing several of his relatives to positions in the Palestinian embassy.
The GUPS criticised Zomlot for calling the police to the Palestinian embassy, where they arrested a number of Palestinian students. GUPS said the embassy security staff had attacked the students prior to the arrival of the police.
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