British MPs vote in favour of Palestinian State

Crescent International

Dhu al-Hijjah 18, 1435 2014-10-13

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

While symbolic, the vote in the British House of Commons today in favor of recognizing the Palestinian State has great political significance. It has boosted the morale of the Palestinians while bringing grief to the Zionist occupiers of Palestine.

London, Crescent-online
Monday October 13, 2014, 23:03 DST

Amid intense lobbying both for and against, members of the British Parliament (lower house) voted today 274-12 in favor of recognizing Palestine as a State.

The motion in the British House of Commons read: "this house believes that the government should recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution."

While the vote, called for by the opposition Labor MP Grahame Morris, will not have any immediate impact on British government policy—Prime Minister David Cameron abstained from voting but the opposition Labor leader Ed Milliband, himself Jewish, voted in favor—the parliament’s decision carries great symbolic significance for the Palestinians.

They have struggled for decades to secure international recognition. Last year, the UN voted to confer on Palestine the status of a non-member State entity and the British vote comes just as Sweden's new centre-left government is set to officially recognize Palestine.

The Palestinians hope that European countries will act to grant recognition to Palestine alongside other UN member states.

Almost exactly 97 years ago (November 1917), then British Foreign Secretary Lord James Balfour, in response to a letter from Baron Rothschild, had promised to create a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine without affecting the rights of indigenous Palestinian people.

Britain had no right to promise the land of one people—the Palestinians—to another people—European Jews—without even consulting the indigenous population.

The promise and subsequent moves by Britain were based on raw colonialism that rode rough shods over the rights of the Palestinian people who have suffered immeasurably to this day.

Gradually, however, it has started to dawn on western powers including Britain that unless a two-state solution is imposed on the Holy Land, the Zionist State will disappear altogether.

This was demonstrated during the July-August Zionist onslaught on Gaza during which Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters gave the Israeli army a bloody nose. While the Israelis killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians civilians, one-third of them children, Palestinian fighters managed to kill 73 Israelis, almost all of them soldiers.

This set alarm bells ringing in Tel Aviv as well as other western capitals including London, Paris, Berlin and Washington DC. The old colonialists and imperialists can clearly see the writing on the wall and the impending demise of the Zionist entity.

For their part, the Zionists continue their bloody-minded policies but they are short-circuiting their own tortuous existence.

Ultimately, the future of Palestine will be decided on the battlefield when the Zionists are completely defeated but every diplomatic setback the Zionists suffer is a step in the right direction.

END