Ireland Set to Recognize 'State' of Palestine

Jerusalem, 9 February, 2017 (TPS) -- The Republic of Ireland will recognize a Palestinian state, perhaps as early as next week, according to media reports and TPS sources in Dublin.

The move is the latest step in a long process. Irish Catholics have supported Palestinians for decades, and the Irish Republican Army maintained close ties with the PLO throughout The Troubles, the 1968-99 civil war that raged in northern Ireland.

The 166-member Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, recognized Palestine as a state in 2014, and pushed the government also to extend recognition. That didn’t happen, but last June, MP Darragh O’Brien revived the initiative with a resolution calling on the government to recognize the Palestinian state. and more recently has ramped up efforts to drum up support for the move in parliament.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely told TPS that Israel “is working via a range of diplomatic channels” to counter a blitz by the Palestinian embassy in Dublin and the Arab League to ensure the measure is ratified. TPS sources in Dublin said that Palestinian representatives have been busy calling every member of Dáil Éireann, visiting political offices and applying intense diplomatic pressure on both parliament and the government .

Spokespeople for Hotovely would not elaborate on the “range of diplomatic channels. In addition, spokespeople for the foreign ministry and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is also Israel’s foreign minister, did not respond to requests for details about Israel’s ai to prevent Ireland from recognizing a Palestinian state. As is well-known, tis move would only make it harder to achieve a solution to the conflict.”

Pro-Israel activists in Dublin slammed the move as “shameful”, and criticized the opposition party Fianna Fail for failing to implement the lessons from the peace process that brought an end to the fighting in Northern Ireland two decades ago.

“It is a shame that Fianna Fail, who were so instrumental in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, didn’t learn some of the lessons from that experience,” said Barry Williams, chairman of Irish4Israel, a lobby and public diplomacy group.

“In Belfast, nothing was agreed until everything was agreed. The talks were based on solid principles – no preconditions, no unilateral decisions by a third party. But here you’ve got unilateral decision from a third party.

“Ireland has no state in the conflict and it should not be doing this,” Williams told TPS by phone from Dublin.

Williams said that Israel and Ireland enjoy more than 1 billion Euros in trade per year, mainly concentrated on IT components and pharmaceuticals. But he added that efforts to block the move would likely fail, given the political reality of a minority government that is unable to go out on a limb to oppose the resolution.

Given that situation, Fianna Fail is likely to continue continue to push for this motion, and will likely drum up enough support that the government will have little choice but to support it.

“The worst thing about it, to me I think, is that this is nothing more than a token gesture to gain a few votes, Once again, Fianna Fall is using the Palestinians as pawns to extract a benefit for themselves,” Williams said.