MOSCOW, October 31 (RIA Novosti) — After the Swedish government recently officially recognized the state of Palestine, experts question whether such a step could have impact on other European countries and inspire them to follow their lead.
“I think that the other European countries will follow the Swedish decisions, but I'm afraid it might take some time,” said Anders Persson, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Linnaeus University, in an interview with Radio VR.
According to Persson, the EU would need a serious shake-up in the form of a severe crisis, or a third intifada, to undertake decisive steps towards Palestine’s recognition. However, he said, frustration and displeasure with Israel’s excessive settlement policy in the West Bank are becoming more intense and Israel is facing increased international isolation.
“There is not a single state in the world that recognizes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. And the same is true for Israel's annexation of east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. And almost all governments in the world […] are explicitly opposed to the way Benjamin Netanyahu is handling the conflict with the Palestinians,” Mr. Persson claimed. “Israel is growing very-very isolated. And even in America, in the Jewish community in the US we see more and more people speaking out against the way Israel has been conducting its policies over the recent years,” he noted.
Many political and economic experts claim that the steady economic growth Israel has managed to achieve over the last few decades will allow the country to continue its policy of oppression towards a much weaker Palestine.
“Israel’s economy is stronger than ever before, life in Israel is very good and so on. So, Israel is extremely isolated politically, but not economically,” the expert said, adding that Israel is “much stronger than the Palestine” and that the current decision made by the Swedish government is aimed at equalizing two parties and promoting the two-state solution.
The two-state solution implies that Israel would remain a Jewish, democratic state that would peacefully co-exist with an independent state of Palestine, predominantly populated by Muslims. However, the position of Israel’s government is “not serious when it comes to the peace process”, Mr. Persson believes, saying that Israeli Prime-Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s numerous remarks and speeches clarified that some kind of autonomy is all the Palestinians should expect in the future.
“This past summer Netanyahu outlined his policies in a major speech, where he said that Israel can never give up the military control over the West Bank. And that essentially means that no Palestinian state will come into being,” Mr. Persson said. “We are back to the 1970’es-1980’es when we were talking about the local Palestinian autonomy. This is a big-big step backward, rather than forward that the Israeli Government has outlined in the recent weeks,” he emphasized.
Over the last few years Israeli-Palestinian relations have been characterized by constant deterioration, resulting in excessive use of power by Israel and the mass killing of civilians, predominantly Gaza’s population. A 50-day military operation, launched by Israeli military forces in Gaza-strip in summer 2014, killed about 2200 Gaza residents, making the prospects for successful conflict resolution even more unreal.
