Sweden to recognise Palestine as a state


October 5, 2014
Sarah Benton


Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman (shown here explaining Israel’s policy at the UN on September 29, 2014) has summoned the Swedish ambassador to Israel for a ‘conversation’ with him about what he has failed to understand about the Palestinians (see 2nd item.) Photo by Brendan McDermid / Reuters.

Sweden to recognise Palestinian state

Sweden is to “recognise the state of Palestine”, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has said, the first long-term EU member country to do so.

“The conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be solved with a two-state solution,” he said during his inaugural address in parliament.

It should be “negotiated in accordance with international law”, he said.

Sweden last month voted out the centre-right Alliance coalition of Fredrik Reinfeldt after eight years.

That allowed the Social Democrats led by Mr Lofven to form a government with other parties on the left including the Greens.

“A two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to peaceful co-existence. Sweden will therefore recognise the state of Palestine,” Mr Lofven said on Friday, without giving a timeline for the recognition.

Sweden will join more than 130 other countries that recognise a Palestinian state.

Most of the EU’s 28 member states have refrained from recognising Palestinian statehood and those that do – such as Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – did so before joining the bloc.

Long campaign
The Palestinians have long sought to establish an independent, sovereign state in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem as its capital, and the Gaza Strip – occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.

Correspondents say Sweden’s move is likely to be strongly criticised by Israel and the US, who argue that an independent Palestinian state should only emerge through negotiations.

In 1988, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat unilaterally declared a Palestinian state within the pre-June 1967 lines.

This won recognition from about 100 countries, mainly Arab, Communist and non-aligned states – several of them in Latin America.

The 1993 Oslo Accord between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel led to mutual recognition. However, two decades of on-off peace talks have since failed to produce a permanent settlement.

In 2012, the UN General Assembly voted to upgrade the status of the Palestinians to that of a “non-member observer state”.

It followed a failed bid to join the international body as a full member state in 2011 because of a lack of support in the UN Security Council.


Israel criticises Swedish plan to recognise state of Palestine

By Dan Williams, Reuters
October 05, 2014

JERUSALEM- Israel has described a plan by Sweden’s new centre-left government to recognise the state of Palestine as being ill-considered in the absence of Middle East peace negotiations.

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven’s announced the move during his inaugural address to Stockholm’s parliament on Friday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Sunday said Lofven had “hastened to make declarations … apparently before he could delve into the matter and understand it is the Palestinians who have constituted the obstacle to progress” in reaching a peace accord with Israel.

Writing on Facebook, Lieberman also said he would summon the Swedish ambassador for a “conversation” at Israel’s Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said the Swedish announcement was “great and honourable” and he hoped other countries would follow suit, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Palestinians seek statehood in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, adjacent East Jerusalem and the blockaded Gaza Strip. They have sought to side-step stalled peace talks by lobbying foreign powers to recognise their sovereignty claim.

The U.N. General Assembly approved the de facto recognition of the state of Palestine in 2012 but the European Union and most EU countries have yet to give official recognition.

In his speech Lofven said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be solved with a two-state solution, negotiated in accordance with international law.

“A two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to peaceful co-existence. Sweden will therefore recognise the state of Palestine,” said Lofven.

Israel says it wants to resume peace negotiations with Abbas but that he must dissolve a unity government formed with Hamas Islamists who control Gaza and preach the Jewish state’s destruction. Israel and Hamas have fought several wars, most recently over 51 days in July and August.

The Israelis have long balked at the Palestinian demand for the West Bank, which they have peppered with Jewish settlements, and for East Jerusalem, which they annexed as their capital in a move not recognised internationally.

“Prime Minister Lofven must understand that no declaration nor move by an external player will replace direct talks between the sides that will be part of a comprehensive accord between Israel and the entire Arab world,” Lieberman said.

Lieberman, a far-rightist in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative coalition government, called on Lofven “to focus on more burning problems in the region such as the daily mass-killings going on in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere”.

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See also
Recognise Palestine, the diplomatic solution

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