“We have found ourselves in a situation where we feel the need to move forward unilaterally because the European response has been so weak.”
Two months ago, Spain’s President Pedro Sánchez held a meeting in Madrid with the prime ministers of Slovenia, Ireland and Malta. When the meeting ended, the four heads of government announced they were ready to recognise the Palestinian state in a way that would contribute to the success of a new peace process [bizarrely, the nation of Malta already recognises Palestinian statehood, and has done since 1988]. There were even rumours that Belgium and Portugal might tag along for the ride. Yet two months later, none of the countries — apart from Malta, of course — have recognised Palestine, though they keep talking energetically about doing so.
Sánchez has been speaking about the need to recognise Palestinian statehood since mid-November, weeks after the bombs began raining down on Gaza. In fact, he has been talking about it since the day he became prime minister six years ago. One could go back even further in time, to November 17, 2014, when the Spanish parliament approved a non-binding motion calling for the recognition of the State of Palestine, with a crushing 319 votes in favour and 2 against. The motion was supported by all political parties (certainly not the case today, with both the People’s Party and the far-right VOX firmly in Israel’s corner), yet the then-President Mariano Rajoy did nothing.
Today (May 21, 2024) was supposed to be the day. Weeks ago, Sánchez announced that Spain’s recognition of Palestine would be made official at today’s Council of Ministers in Madrid. Even the EU’s chief diplomat-cum-head gardener, Josep Borrell, himself a former minister in Sánchez’s government, confirmed the plans. But three days ago Sánchez pushed the date back a day or two, so that he can make a joint announcement with other EU member countries. As each day goes by, the death toll in Gaza rises by a few hundred more. When a genocide is in full swing, talk is cheap.
Would it even make much of a difference if three more EU countries recognised Palestine’s right to existence? Probably not, especially with the EU’s three largest economies, Germany, France and Italy, showing no sign of doing the same. Some view recognition of a Palestinian state as a political tool to pressure Israel into accepting a two-state solution despite the Netanyahu government’s innate hostility to the idea. Doing something, they say, is surely better than doing nothing, especially of nothing essentially means supporting and enabling Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza.
“We have found ourselves in a situation where we feel the need to move forward unilaterally because the European response has been so weak,” a European diplomat from one of the countries that is working on Palestinian statehood recognition told The National. “Of course it would be better if the EU could come to a proper agreement on our approach to Israel and Palestine. But we have been unable to do that, which has massively weakened our influence in the region.”
It could also be argued, as Yves has done, that recognising Palestine at this stage in proceedings is likely to be a futile exercise given that a two-state solution is as good as unworkable anyway:
John Mearsheimer has stated a two-state solution is impossible and everyone advocating it ought to know that….which would seem to suggest their motives for touting it are cynical. One insurmountable obstacle is that a Palestinian state would have its own military, something Israel would never tolerate. A second issue is the way Israel has balkanized the area between Gaza and the West Bank, making any integration or even, say, land bridge very hard to implement. Third is what to do with the settlers. They ought to be expelled, again something Israel would never accept.
Current State of Play
Of the world’s 193 countries, 143 have recognised Palestine as a state — representing over three-quarters of the global population — with the Bahamas the latest to do so, on May 7. That’s four more countries than on October 7.
Only nine of those countries are in the EU, and of those nine, six (Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Poland and Romania) recognised Palestine during the early 1980’s when they were still members of the Warsaw Pact and most definitely not members of the European Union, or the European Economic Community as it was then known. Another two — Cyprus and Malta — did so before joining the EU. In fact, the only country to do so as an EU member was Sweden, in 2014.
Yet Sweden may already be having second thoughts. In a vote at the UN General Assembly earlier this month on whether to “upgrade Palestine’s rights at the world body as an Observer State, without offering full membership,” the country’s centre-right coalition government abstained. For their part, Hungary and Czechia were among just nine countries (including, of course, Israel, the US and Argentina) to vote against the motion. The governments of Hungary and Czechia are two of Israel’s closest allies in Europe. Which begs the question: will they soon be reversing their recognition of Palestine? Is that even possible?
Read the full article on Naked Capitalism
Nick Corbishley 