A Symbolic Vote in Britain Recognizes a Palestinian State

NY. TIMES

Against a backdrop of growing impatience across Europe with Israeli policy, Britain’s Parliament overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution Monday night to give diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian state. The vote was a symbolic but potent indication of how public opinion has shifted since the breakdown of American-sponsored peace negotiations and the conflict in Gaza this summer.

Though the outcome of the 274-to-12 parliamentary vote was not binding on the British government, the debate was the latest evidence of how support for Israeli policies, even among staunch allies of Israel, is giving way to more calibrated positions and in some cases frustrated expressions of opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance toward the Palestinians.

 

To make our recognition of Palestine dependent on Israel’s agreement would be to grant Israel a veto over Palestinian self-determination,” said Mr. Morris, who leads a group called Labour Friends of Palestine.

Richard Ottaway, a Conservative lawmaker and chairman of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, said that he had “stood by Israel through thick and thin, through the good years and the bad,” but now realized “in truth, looking back over the past 20 years, that Israel has been slowly drifting away from world public opinion.”

 

The conflict in Gaza also gave new impetus to efforts to pressure Israel through a campaign to boycott some goods made in West Bank settlements. And it helped fuel a surge in anti-Semitic episodes across Europe this year amid concerns that opposition to Israeli policies was allowing anti-Jewish bias to take root in the European mainstream.

Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said that moves like the British resolution and Sweden’s recent statement “make conflict resolution much more difficult” by sending Palestinians the message that “they can achieve things” outside negotiations. Israel, the United States and most of Europe have long insisted that the only path to Palestinian statehood is through bilateral negotiations.

U.N. Recognizes Palestine as Nonmember State

The United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember state Thursday, in a move that strengthens the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. More than 130 countries voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state, a stinging defeat for Israel and the United States. Palestinians could use their enhanced status to fuel renewed peace talks or to confront Israel in new ways.

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It’s time for Palestinians to unite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday. People crammed in at a rally in Ramallah, where Abbas spoke after returning from a successful trip to the United Nations, which gave “nonmember observer state” status to the authority. The change puts the Palestinians on the same footing as the Vatican in the eyes of the international organization. The most important divide facing Abbas lies between his own Fatah party, based in the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Abbas said Sunday that he thinks the two factions can “achieve reconciliation.”

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FRESH AIR   

Writing for the New York Review of Books at the beginning of November, Robert Malley, the program director for the Middle East and North Africa with the International Crisis Group, and Hussein Agha described the current situation in the Middle East:

Alliances are topsy-turvy, defy logic, are unfamiliar and shifting. Theocratic regimes back secularists; tyrannies promote democracy; the U.S. forms partnerships with Islamists; Islamists support Western military intervention. Arab nationalists side with regimes they have long combated; liberals side with Islamists with whom they then come to blows. Saudi Arabia backs secularists against the Muslim Brothers and Salafis against secularists. The U.S. is allied with Iraq, which is allied with Iran, which supports the Syrian regime, which the U.S. hopes to help topple. The U.S. is also allied with Qatar, which subsidizes Hamas, and with Saudi Arabia, which funds Salafis who inspire jihadists who kill Americans whenever they can.