Norway, Ireland, Spain decide to recognize Palestinian state

Oslo, Norway – AFP

Norway, Ireland and Spain announced on Wednesday that they will recognize Palestine as a state.
Ireland’s leader said his nation would recognize Palestine as a state but did not specify timing, while leaders of Norway and Spain said their nations would do so as of May 28.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store made the announcement in Oslo, Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Madrid and Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris in Dublin.

Norway — which has played a key role in Middle East diplomacy over the years, hosting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at the beginning of the 1990s which led to the Oslo Accords — said recognition was needed to support moderate voices.

– ‘Only alternative’ – 

“In the midst of a war, with tens of thousands killed and injured, we must keep alive the only alternative that offers a political solution for Israelis and Palestinians alike: Two states, living side by side, in peace and security,” Store said.
“Recognition of Palestine is a means of supporting the moderate forces which have been losing ground in this protracted and brutal conflict,” he said.
“This could ultimately make it possible to resume the process towards achieving a two-state solution and give it renewed momentum,” he added.
Spain’s Sanchez said in parliament in Madrid: “Next Tuesday, May 28, Spain’s cabinet will approve the recognition of the Palestinian state,” he said, adding that his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu was putting the two state solution in “danger” with his policy of “pain and destruction” in the Gaza Strip.
And Ireland’s Harris hailed a “historic and important day for Ireland and for Palestine.”
For decades, the formal recognition of a Palestinian state has been seen as the endgame of a peace process between Palestinians and their Israeli neighbors.
The United States and most Western European nations have said they are willing to one day recognize Palestinian statehood, but not before agreement is reached on thorny issues like final borders and the status of Jerusalem.
In 2014, Sweden, which has a large Palestinian community, became the first EU member in western Europe to recognize Palestinian statehood.
It had earlier been recognized by six other European countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,647 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.