It is understood that Ireland and some other EU states will announce formal recognition of Palestine once a peace initiative – expected in the coming weeks – is under way. Sources were reluctant to put a date on this but said it would be “sooner rather than later”, and was a matter of weeks rather than months.
Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said he had been in discussions with other EU and Arab foreign ministers about how “a joint formal recognition of Palestinian statehood could be a catalyst to help the people of Gaza and the West Bank and in furthering an Arab-led peace initiative”.
Creating a state implies two things:
Why don’t states want people to band together and secede? Well, for the same reason those people want to secede: they want to control the land and taxes.
In the particular case of Gaza, their territorial waters include access to some of the natural gas deposits between Israel and Chipre. There are enough profit margins to subsidize a lot of weapons in a bet to get preferential access to exploitation rights.
Is the recognition of Palestine positive…? That’s a loaded question, with a lot of sides to it.
Every good anarchist understands the power analysis rarely fails, but I’m trying to be a little more optimistic lately