Ireland, Spain and Norway formally recognised a Palestinian state today in a decision slammed by Israel as a ‘reward’ for Hamas more than seven months into the devastating Gaza war. The three European countries believe their initiative has strong symbolic impact, which is likely to encourage others to follow in their footsteps.
As Oslo’s formal recognition went into effect, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide hailed the move as ‘a special day for Norway-Palestine relations’. ‘Norway has been one of the most fervent defenders of a Palestinian state for more than 30 years,’ he added.
‘Recognition of the State of Palestine is not only a matter of historic justice… Is it also an essential requirement if we are all to achieve peace,’ Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (pictured) said before meeting his cabinet. The move, he said, was ‘not against anyone, least of all Israel’.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris (pictured) said Dublin would upgrade its representative office in the West Bank to a full embassy and the Palestinian mission in Ireland will also be offered full embassy status. But Israel’s Foreign Minister expressed rage at the decision this morning, accusing Sanchez of being a ‘partner to incitement’ to Jewish ‘genocide’. ‘You are a partner to incitement to genocide of the Jewish people’, Israel Katz wrote on X, while making a parallel between Spanish minister Yolanda Diaz on the one hand, and Iran ‘s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar on the other following her call for a free Palestine, ‘from the river to the sea’.
Norway and Spain’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state follows their historic role in advancing Israel-Palestinian peace efforts. In 1991, the two sides sat down together for the first time at the Madrid peace conference that paved the way for the 1993 Oslo Accords, which at the time were expected to serve as the foundations for a peace process that never materialised. Hamas welcomed today’s decision and urged other countries to follow suit. ‘We consider this an important step towards affirming our right to our land,’ it said, calling ‘on countries around the world to recognise our legitimate national rights’.
But Spain’s Prime Minister said the decision to recognise a Palestinian state reflected his nation’s ‘outright rejection of Hamas, which is against the two-state solution’ and whose October 7 attacks led to the Gaza war. ‘It is the only way to move towards the solution that we all recognise as the only possible way to achieve a peaceful future – that of a Palestinian state living side-by-side with the state of Israel in peace and security .’ The plans were unveiled last week in a coordinated announcement by the prime ministers of the three countries and go into effect today. Although Slovenia has also started the process of recognising a Palestinian state, the issue has provoked sharp disagreement within the 27-nation European Union, of which Spain and Ireland are also members.
For decades, formal recognition of a Palestinian state has been seen as the endgame of a negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Washington and most Western European nations have said they are willing to one day recognise Palestinian statehood, but not before agreement on thorny issues like the status of Jerusalem and final borders. The spiralling bloodshed in Gaza has revived calls for Palestinians to be given their own state, with a growing number of European countries expressing a desire to do so.
Within the EU, states like France believe it is not the right time to do so, while Germany only envisages recognition following negotiations between the two sides. Tuesday’s move by Spain, Ireland and Norway will mean 145 of the United Nations’ 193 member states now recognise Palestinian statehood. These include many Middle Eastern, African and Asian countries but not the United States, Canada, most of western Europe, Australia, Japan or South Korea. In 2014, Sweden became the first EU member to recognise a Palestinian state.
It followed in the steps of six other European countries that took the step before joining the bloc – Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania. The decision by Madrid, Dublin and Oslo has provoked a furious response from Israel. On Monday, Foreign Minister Katz began taking ‘preliminary punitive measures’ against Spain, ordering its Jerusalem consulate to stop offering consular services to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. ‘We will not put up with harming Israel’s sovereignty and security,’ Katz said, describing recognition of Palestinian statehood as ‘an award to Hamas’.
On October 7, Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians. Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza. The Israeli army says 37 of them are dead. Israel’s relentless retaliatory offensive has killed more than 36,000 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. On Sunday, Katz posted a video on X splicing footage of the October 7 attacks with flamenco dancing, saying: ‘Sanchez: Hamas thanks you for your service’ in a move denounced by Spain as ‘scandalous and revolting’.
A day earlier, Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles accused Israel of committing ‘a real genocide’ in Gaza. Until now, such language had only been heard from far-left ministers of Sanchez’s coalition but not from a member of his Socialist party. ‘Some have framed our decision to recognise the state of Palestine as… a reward for terror. Nothing could be further from the truth,’ Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said on Monday. With the move, Dublin, Madrid and Oslo want ‘to see a future of normalised relations between the two peoples’ and to implement a two-state solution, he said.
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