Recognition of a Palestinian State by Western countries could push Israel to take “unilateral measures”, warned the chief of diplomacy, Gideon Saar on Sunday, after information on projects to annex part of the occupied West Bank.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced in July that Paris was going to recognize a State of Palestine in the UN General Assembly at the end of September. Other countries, including Canada, Australia and Belgium, then expressed the same intention. London said in August that he would follow suit if a truce was not concluded in Gaza, where Israel waged a war against Hamas response to the attack launched by this Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil.
“States like France and the United Kingdom that have prompted the so-called recognition (of a Palestinian State) made a huge mistake,” said Gideon Saar at a press conference with his Danish counterpart Lars Løkke Rasmussen visiting Jerusalem. “It would make peace even more difficult to achieve”, and “it will push Israel to also take unilateral measures,” he warned, without specifying which ones.
King Abdallah II of Jordan reaffirmed on Sunday “absolute refusal” of Amman of any “Israeli measure to annex the West Bank” during interviews in Abu Dhabi with President Emirati, Mohammed Ben Zayed Al Nahyane. These two leaders also expressed their opposition “to the colonies’ expansion projects (Israeli editor’s note) in the West Bank”, denouncing the “Israeli positions and statements which constitute a threat to the sovereignty of the regions of the region”, according to the Jordanian palace.
The American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said on Sunday, in an interview with the BBC, that the recognition of a Palestinian state would be “disastrous”. “Unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state is a violation of the Oslo agreements,” concluded between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (OLP) of Yasser Arafat, he said.
A largely symbolic recognition
Recognition of a Palestinian state would be largely symbolic due to the refusal of Israel of the creation of such a state to which the Palestinians aspire. The latter aims to establish it in the territories of West Bank and the Gaza Strip, separated by Israeli territory. The head of American diplomacy, Marco Rubio, said Thursday that he had warned Paris and the other capitals concerned with possible reprisals from Israel in the form of an annexation of territories in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
He refused to join the global conviction of the last colonization plan in the West Bank approved by Israel in August, the implementation of which would prevent the creation of a possible Palestinian State with territorial continuity.
The far-right Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich had previously declared, to the address of European leaders that in the event of a recognition of a State of Palestine The answer will be “the application of Israeli sovereignty on all parties of Judea-Samaria“, a term by which Israel designates the West Bank.
