Norway, Spain, and Ireland will recognize an independent Palestinian stateas of May 28.
“There cannot be peace in the Middle East if there is no recognition,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said. “By recognizing a Palestinian state, Norway supports the Arab peace plan.”
That’s a big move for Spain, they usually don’t recognize splinter states because of their issues with Catalunya
Is Palestine a splinter state though?
I mean, if you want we can argue semantics, but I think you get my point
Actually this isn’t a semantic argument.
As far as Spain is concerned there are factual de jure differences.
Despite a higher degree of autonomy, Catalonia has been part of Spain for a while now.
It seems they even accepted the Spanish constitution:
Palestine (neither West Bank nor Gaza) on the other hand has never been part of Israel.
Functionally, probably? Given most states are sovereign instead of being divided up into zones by security checkpoints managed by a foreign power and which requires citizenship in said foreign power to cross. Between how much influence Isreal has in the government of the West Bank archipelago and the requirement that Palestinians possess a lower tier of Israeli citizenship in order to move from town to town, I don’t think a strong case can be made that the Isrealis have allowed the Palestinians have sovereignty over their own territory.
As such the Palestinian people of the West Bank have been and unfortunately practically remain part of the Israeli state, albeit a horribly discriminated and abused part of it with very good reason to splinter off into their own state. If Isreal had actually followed the UN mandate in the first place there might be a stronger argument that the West Bank and Gaza have always had a sovereign Palestinian government, but they functionally annexed them instead, and as such the West Bank and Gaza are now hopefully splintering off from the government they have been largely barred from participating in on racial grounds.
Technically yes because formally there are two autonomous regions (Gaza and West Bank) on Israeli soil.
Has Israel actually claimed the West Bank and Gaza as its territory? I thought the Israelis were content to be conquerors and occupiers. Claiming the land would mean either expelling the Palestinians (not politically expedient even for Netanyahu – yet – which is why he’s settled for simply killing them all instead) or granting them citizenship and the right to participate in Israel’s government (a nonstarter for any Israeli government since Rabin).
They never acknowledged any borders partitioning Palestine and Israel, so technically they claimed it with agreeing to various peace agreements like not settling in Gaza strip.
Edit: And they vehemently oppose Palestinian statehood. They had the US veto a UN vote on that a decade or so ago.