Bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says countries include Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Slovenia and Malta, as Arab and European officials discuss end to Gaza conflict in Riyadh
Several European member states are expected to recognize Palestinian statehood by the end of May, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday at the sidelines of a World Economic Forum special meeting in Riyadh.
He said these included Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Slovenia and Malta.
The meeting between European and Arab officials took place on the sidelines of a two-day World Economic Forum special meeting in Riyadh, with the sides discussing shared partnership in advancing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“If we want to move this two-state solution forward it will not happen from the parties. I do not believe that Israel is ready to negotiate at this point, and I do not think that the US is ready to take the necessary leadership,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, one of the organizers of the meeting, told reporters after it concluded.
“So I think an Arab-European leadership is the best we can hope for.”
Borrell’s comments come amid a series of moves from European countries seeking to recognize Palestinian statehood. Earlier in April, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his country would recognize Palestinian statehood by July. Sanchez added that that he believed there would soon be a “critical mass” within the European Union to push several member states to adopt the same position, according to state news agency EFE.
Malta, along with Slovenia and Ireland, was said by Sanchez at a March 22 European Council meeting to have agreed to “take the first steps” toward recognizing statehood declared by Palestinians in the Israeli-controlled West Bank and Gaza Strip. At the time, Sanchez said he expected the recognition to happen during the current four-year legislature, which began in 2023.
Israel subsequently accused the four countries of offering a “prize for terrorism” that would reduce the chances of a negotiated resolution to the Gaza conflict.
In February, the Knesset voted to back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration opposing any “unilateral” recognition of a Palestinian state, as international calls grew for the revival of efforts to reach a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict.
Issued amid the ongoing war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, the Israeli position states that any permanent accord with the Palestinians must be reached through direct negotiations between the sides and not by international dictates.
Arab states and the European Union agreed at a meeting in Spain in November that a two-state solution was the answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Since 1988, 139 out of 193 United Nations member states have recognized Palestinian statehood.
Content retrieved from: https://www.timesofisrael.com/eu-top-diplomat-at-least-5-countries-expected-to-recognize-palestinian-state-in-may/.