Ireland, Spain lead the call for EU moral clarity on Palestine. Will it be enough?

On May 22nd, Ireland and Spain joined Sweden in a very exclusive club. It’s made up of European Union (EU) member states that recognised Palestine as a state while being a formal member of the EU bloc.

Until this May, Sweden was the only one that had taken this step. It did so in 2014. Other EU countries that recognise Palestine statehood — Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Hungary, Malta, Romania, Poland and Slovakia — took the step before joining the Union. At the time, they were members of the Soviet bloc.

The reason for our focus on Ireland and Spain is that Norway, which joined them in recognising Palestinian statehood on May 22nd, is not a member of the EU. Norway is merely associated with the EU via membership of the European Economic Area.

Therefore, it is Ireland and Spain’s gumption that is at issue here and what effect, if any, it will have on their fellow EU member states. It is undeniable that their explicit recognition of the aspirations — and the agony of dispossession, death and destruction — of Palestinians is a clarion call to Europe. It is a call to the very moral values that the EU claims to cherish and uphold.

Even so, it’s unclear if other EU countries will join Ireland and Spain in their attempt to frame the Palestinian issue as it should be — a moral cause, one that this generation must try and settle in order to give some succour to a long-suffering people. While more than 140 nations globally recognise Palestine, only nine of the EU’s 27 states do so. Could Ireland and Spain turn the tide?

They’re trying to frame it as an urgent issue, one for everyone’s conscience in this age of decolonisation. On May 22nd, Ireland’s taoiseach Simon Harris said that recognition has both powerful political and symbolic value, that his country keeps its own troubled history in mind when considering the Palestinians’ plight, and to recognise them is just “the right thing to do”.

How many other EU leaders are so moved? In February, France’s President Emmanuel Macron said that recognising a Palestinian state was “not a taboo for France” and added that “we owe it to the Palestinians whose aspirations have been trampled for too long”. Just days before Ireland and Spain (and Norway) recognised the Palestinian state, 500 intellectuals signed a letter to Mr Macron calling for France to do the same. He hasn’t, as of now.

Indeed, the EU’s current position on the Palestinian issue remains rather wishy-washy. Back in 1980, the then European Economic Commission unanimously backed the two-state solution, long before the US. But ever since, the EU has not been particularly bold and some of its bigger member states, such as Germany and France, dutifully only have “representative offices” (instead of embassies) in Ramallah. While supporting the Palestinian authority financially, they remain in line with the US position that recognition of a Palestinian state must be part of a two-state solution agreed with Israel. Astonishingly, this is also the position of the UK, which could be said to have started it all in 1917, by issuing a 67-word document that expressed support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. The Balfour Declaration, as it is known, was described thus by the writer Arthur Koestler: “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third”.

As things stand, the stance adopted by the US, UK and majority-of-EU may be disingenuous. To wait for Israeli agreement on a Palestinian state gives Israel’s government a de facto veto. Something that is especially disheartening at this point in time when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to say he will not allow a two-state solution.

But with Ireland and Spain breaking ranks with their fellow EU member states to formally recognise a Palestinian state on May 28, is the apparent European compact with Israel starting to crumble?

Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com