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Abbas to ask EU to recognise State of Palestine
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas will today meet with the EU’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini and the 28 EU foreign ministers on the sidelines of their monthly meeting.
The meeting will focus on the Middle East Peace Process and recent developments following US President Donald Trump’s Jerusalem announcement and freezing US funds to UNWRA.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki told AFP that Abbas will “reiterate his commitment to the peace process”. Abbas will urge the EU to take on a bigger role in trying to move peace efforts forward, declaring that American “exclusivity and monopoly” in the process is over, Malki said.
Maliki also called on EU member states to recognise Palestine “as a way to respond” to the US’s Jerusalem announcement. “Since Trump’s decision has altered the rules of the game, he [Abbas] expects the European foreign ministers to come forward and collectively recognise the state of Palestine as a way to respond back to Trump’s decision,” Malki said.
Officials in Brussels say recognition of Palestine is not on the agenda — the EU defers the issue to individual member states — and the best Abbas can hope for is progress towards an EU association agreement, similar to the one signed by Israel. French media reported yesterday that France is leading this initiative and will stop short of recommending full recognition of a Palestinian state.
Israel’s Channel 10 reported that the Slovenian parliament’s foreign affairs committee is expected to vote to recognise the state of Palestine on 31 January, followed by a vote of the full parliament in February, while three other European countries — Luxembourg, Ireland and Belgium — are thinking of following suit.
The UK Labour Party has said it will immediately recognise Palestine if it enters government, and would likely back a Palestinian UN membership bid. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently said that “the moment is not yet right to play that card”.
The EU failed to respond to Abbas’s recent address at the PLO Central Committee when he said that Europe had exploited its Jews for a “colonial project”. The EU said: “Our policy is not to comment on comments”.