Norway, Spain, and Ireland will recognize an independent Palestinian stateas of May 28.

“There cannot be peace in the Middle East if there is no recognition,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said. “By recognizing a Palestinian state, Norway supports the Arab peace plan.”

        •  geissi   ( @geissi@feddit.de ) 
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          31 month ago

          Actually this isn’t a semantic argument.
          As far as Spain is concerned there are factual de jure differences.

          Despite a higher degree of autonomy, Catalonia has been part of Spain for a while now.
          It seems they even accepted the Spanish constitution:

          After Franco’s death in 1975, Catalonia voted for the adoption of a democratic Spanish Constitution in 1978

          Palestine (neither West Bank nor Gaza) on the other hand has never been part of Israel.

      •  Sonori   ( @sonori@beehaw.org ) 
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        41 month ago

        Functionally, probably? Given most states are sovereign instead of being divided up into zones by security checkpoints managed by a foreign power and which requires citizenship in said foreign power to cross. Between how much influence Isreal has in the government of the West Bank archipelago and the requirement that Palestinians possess a lower tier of Israeli citizenship in order to move from town to town, I don’t think a strong case can be made that the Isrealis have allowed the Palestinians have sovereignty over their own territory.

        As such the Palestinian people of the West Bank have been and unfortunately practically remain part of the Israeli state, albeit a horribly discriminated and abused part of it with very good reason to splinter off into their own state. If Isreal had actually followed the UN mandate in the first place there might be a stronger argument that the West Bank and Gaza have always had a sovereign Palestinian government, but they functionally annexed them instead, and as such the West Bank and Gaza are now hopefully splintering off from the government they have been largely barred from participating in on racial grounds.

  • Recognition of Palestinian state ‘reward for terror,’ says Netanyahu

    “Establishment of Israel reward for terror!” would be a more accurate headline. You are not aware of the fact that a lot of Israel’s most respected politicians have been involved in acts of terror against the British and the Palestinians in the years before 1948? Take a history lesson!

    The president is a strong supporter of a two-state solution and has been throughout his career

    If Biden had ever been a strong supporter of a two state solution, he had put some pressure on Israel a long time ago and that Palestinian state would be in existence for decades now. Biden is a strong supporter of Israel and nobody else! Hypocrites, I hate them!

    a Palestinian state should be realized through direct negotiations between the parties, not through unilateral recognition.

    Do you know what doesn’t require direct negotiations between the two parties? And what in some cases is happily accepted unilaterally, but if it is too criminal, is simply tolerated for decades?

    • The unilateral establishment of the State of Israel by the Zionists.
    • The ethnic cleansing and dispossession of 75% of the Palestinian population by Israel
    • The incorporation of 90% of the original Mandate territory (instead of 55%) by Israel
    • The annexation of all of Jerusalem by Israel
    • Making Jerusalem the capital of Israel by Israel
    • The establishment of an apartheid system by Israel
    • The complete destruction and ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip by Israel

    Germany: Recognition of a Palestinian state only in the course of successful peace negotiations

    Israel has been thwarting negotiations on a Palestinian state for decades. It has even supported Hamas for this very purpose! Israel says loud and clear that it does not want a two-state solution but full control over Greater Israel, without Palestinians or with limited rights for Palestinians.

    Israel’s Western allies know this very well and lie without blushing. And without wasting a single thought on how many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians died and got injured for this policy, were expelled, dispossessed, terrorized and humiliated by the occupying power.

    Yes, the Palestinian narrative is dangerous because it is far more compatible with common sense than the Israeli one. It is also more compatible with historical facts and international law. But who cares about facts?

    For those who do, I recommend the following list of outstanding Israeli and Jewish historians, journalists, lawyers, human rights activists and organizations:

    Gideon Levy, Breaking the Silence, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, Max Blumenthal, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Simone Zimmerman, Jewish Currents, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JJP), IfNotNow, Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Never Again Action, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), Neve Gordon, Hiam Bresheeth, Miko Peled, Zach Foster, Andrew Feinstein, Haim Zabner, Miko Peled, Omer Bartov, B’tselem, Rick Perlstein

    Each of these names is worth Googling, reading and listening to.