A displaced Palestinian boy weeps over the death of his father, killed by an Israeli airstrike the previous night, ahead of a funeral outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on June 3, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
United Nations, June 4 (RHC)-- Experts have urged all countries in the world to recognize Palestinian statehood. Since the establishment of the "State of Palestine" in 1988, most countries have already recognized Palestinian statehood. However, a dozen major countries including Argentina, Australia, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States have not recognized Palestinian statehood.
On Monday, a group of United Nations experts called on all countries to recognize the Palestinian state to ensure peace in West Asia. The call came less than a week after Spain, Ireland and Norway officially recognized a Palestinian state, prompting anger from Israel, which has found itself increasingly isolated after nearly eight months of war in Gaza.
The experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said recognition of a Palestinian state was an important acknowledgement of the rights of the Palestinian people and their struggle towards freedom and independence.
"This is a pre-condition for lasting peace in Palestine and the entire Middle East – beginning with the immediate declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza and no further military incursions into Rafah," they said. "A two-state solution remains the only internationally agreed path to peace and security for both Palestine and Israel and a way out of generational cycles of violence and resentment."
Israel reacted furiously to the decision by the three major European countries to recognize Palestinian statehood, accusing them of "rewarding terrorism" and immediately withdrawing its envoys to Ireland, Norway and Spain.
The three major European countries’ ambassadors were summoned by the Zionist regime’s foreign ministry to a meeting where they were forced to watch propaganda footage about alleged crimes by the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement.
It has been difficult for the Israeli regime to swallow the decision by the three European countries to recognize Palestinian statehood because it does not recognize the Palestinians' rights and privileges and has a long-standing expansionist policy of grabbing all Palestinian territories in violation of UN resolutions and international law.
The decision by the three Western European countries to recognize Palestinian statehood broke the Zionist regime's illusion that it could count on the endless and unconditional support of Western countries, regardless of its crimes against Palestinians.
The Israeli regime officials, in order to implement the Zionists' expansionist policies, have used not only brutal force, occupation and ethnic cleansing, but also, a more subtle "slice by slice" expansionist policy, building illegal settlements and making additional territorial claims, along with diplomatic lobbying through influential Zionist lobby groups spread across the Western hemisphere.
Tel Aviv's insistence on recognizing al-Quds as its "undivided capital", the annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan, the construction of additional settlements in the occupied West Bank and the reduction of internationally recognized Palestinian land and sea are examples of such expansionist policies.
Fortunately, despite the huge efforts made by the influential Western lobbying groups, only five countries have moved their embassies to occupied al-Quds.
The decision by the three Western European countries to recognize the State of Palestine with its 1967 borders and occupied al-Quds as its capital, dealt a heavy blow to the Zionists, according to diplomatic experts.
In this regard, the Islamic Republic of Iran has always asserted that the Zionists' occupation of Palestinian land must end, and Palestinians must be restored with everything, their inalienable rights and human privileges that they were deprived, taken away from them by the Zionists with the all-out support of their western backers, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in particular.
In the meantime, the ongoing Israeli regime forces months-long genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip has killed tens of thousands of people. The Israeli killing machine, following a special retaliatory operation by Palestinian resistance groups, launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Since then, the Western-backed Zionist regime has continued to wreak death and destruction against Palestinians with impunity in the occupied Palestinian land despite mounting international pressure for a ceasefire.
In a joint effort to stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza, several contries' governments have taken legal action at international courts. So far, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Tel Aviv to stop its genocidal actions and allow international humanitarian aid to reach the besieged Gaza Strip.
Also, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has applied for an arrest warrant for Israeli "war criminal" prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
