The three European countries including Spain, Ireland, and Norway announced this Tuesday that they formally recognized the State of Palestine, a move aimed at increasing pressure on Israel to stop war crimes in Gaza.
This Tuesday morning, Spain, Ireland, and Norway announced in separate statements that they formally recognized Palestine as a state. The move was aimed at putting more pressure on Israel to make it stop its invasion on Rafah.
“This is a historic decision that has a single goal, and that is to help Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a televised address to the people of Spain, adding that the move was “the only way of advancing toward what everyone recognizes as the only possible solution to achieve a peaceful future, one of a Palestinian state that lives side by side with the Israeli state in peace and security.” A Palestinian state would include the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital under the Palestinian National Authority.
Israel furious at Spain, faced total disappointment!
Furious at Spain’s unprecedented move in recognizing Palestine as a state, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel Katz, reacted via a social media post the same day and threatened to reduce diplomatic ties with Madrid.
“I ordered the Foreign Ministry to send a diplomatic note to Spain’s embassy, prohibiting the Spanish consulate in Jerusalem from conducting consular activities or providing consular services to residents of the Palestinian Authority,” Katz said Tuesday.
“Prime Minister Sanchez … when you don’t fire your deputy and announce the recognition of a Palestinian state – you are complicit in inciting the Jewish genocide and war crimes,” he also said in another post.
However, the threat kind of backfired and was so counter-productive that two other European countries followed suit and announced their formal recognition of Palestine as a state.
Ireland’s Prime Minister Simon Harris said in a statement that Irland had wanted to recognize Palestine at the end of a peace process, but the country decided to make the move now alongside Spain in support for Palestine.
“This is an important moment, and I think it sends a signal to the world that there are practical actions you can take as a country to help keep the hope and destination of a two-state solution alive at a time when others are trying to sadly bomb it into oblivion,” Harris said before a cabinet meeting to formally sign off on the decision on Tuesday.
Likewise, Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide also issued a similar statement to announce the same move. “For more than 30 years, Norway has been one of the strongest advocates for a Palestinian state. Today, when Norway officially recognizes Palestine as a state, is a milestone in the relationship between Norway and Palestine,” Barth Eide said.
Will EU sanction Israel for the first time ever?
Israel’s insatiable desire for killing Palestinians has even triggered a new challenge for Tel Aviv; sanctions by the European Union.
In a Monday meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheál Martin also brought up the idea of imposing sanctions on Israel in response to its war crimes in Rafah, saying that “for the first time at an EU meeting, in a real way, I have seen a significant discussion on sanctions for Israel.”
Asserting that the EU should sanction Israel, Martin further said: “Europe could be doing a hell of a lot more.”
