Thursday, March 10, 2011

Palestinian Pressure for Statehood Acceptance from Britain

Nadene Goldfoot
Britain has not joined the USA in agreement about a Palestine at this time.  Instead, it is raising their status of their London office.  William Hague, Britain's Foreign Secretary  commented to his parliament that they have given aid to the Palestinian Authority (Abbas and his group).  They also work with them.  Now they will join other countries to upgrade their status to the level of a mission.  He's holding talks in London with Abbas. 

This means that the general delegation office in London of Palestinians becomes a Palestinian mission and the head will now be known as the head of the mission.  This affects their visa for all of this group.  It just falls short of giving them formal diiplomatic status which would also mean that they recognize a Palestinian state.  It shows that they have recognized their government to have built a foundation of a viable Palestinian state, building institutions, but are not to recognise them yet. 

They are following in the footsteps of France, Spain and Portugal. 

They say they want to see an urgent return to negotiations based on the 1967 borders.  They say they will work with all parties to press for a breakthrough.

I say that this is only  bringing pressure on Israel, and not on Abbas to sit down and really discuss the facts for peace.  They're certainly showing that Britain is a follower and not a leader, and they are showing their past preference for  the Arabs and not to the Jews.  Just look at the history of the Balfour Declaration, the White Papers,  the giving of arms to Arabs when they left the area.  These decisions are made on Israel's continued building in the settlements due to not having any peace proposals discussed, not from the fact that Palestinians have continually been attacking Israel with bombs, missles, hitting civilian populated areas, teaching hatred in their schools and other such non peaceful practices that make this decision impossible. Or is it based on the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have sworn to kill all Jews and their state.  Only a peaceful activity of buildi;ng due to the Palestinian's continued unacceptance of Israel is said to be at fault by the world. 

Imemc.org also has pointed out that Norway has upgraded the Palestinian representative in Oslo.  Also, they list 7 South American nations have formally recognized  the PLO state on the 1967 borders.  Ecuador just recognized it last week and Paraguay thinks they will by Spring of this year.  They say that Israel feels this move is telling the leadership that they don't have to have direct negotiations.  Israel must have negotiations with them and that if a unilateral move  is to happen, it is not acceptable.  The USA also agrees with this. 

http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=211166
http://www.imemc.org/article/60283?print_page=true  by Alessandra Bajec-International Middle East Media Center is the Palestinian wesite in Judea/Samaria

No comments: