Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, attends a press conference at the Swedish parliament ‘Riksdagen’ in Stockholm, Friday, Oct. 3, 2014. Lofven said Friday that his government will recognize a Palestinian state, a move that drew praise from Palestinian officials. In a declaration listing his government’s priorities, Social Democratic leader Stefan Lofven told lawmakers that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be resolved through a two-state solution requiring “mutual recognition” and a will from both sides to co-exist peacefully. “Therefore Sweden will recognize the state of Palestine,” Lofven said. He didn’t say when or how that would happen. (AP Photo/TT, Janerik Henriksson) SWEDEN OUT
In Response To: Sweden to recognise state of Palestine.
As great as this sounds to the ears of many of us involved in Palestinian solidarity work, this recognition remains founded on the premise of a two state solution with Israel still permanently occupying stolen land with undefined boundaries all across Palestine.
This makes the notion of a geographically continuous and workable Palestinian nation state a total social, political and economic impossibility.
Sweden is not even saying that it recognizes Palestine as a state under 1967 borders, which would at least return significant geographic continuity to the West Bank. The actual borders of what Sweden is aiming to recognize are to be determined by “negotiations.” We all know what these negotiations between the Zionist occupier-US-EU and the Palestinian Authority have produced for the Palestinian people. Nothing but one losing humiliating compromise after another.
So what can we expect from negotiations over this completely unworkable geographic fallacy we are calling a two state solution, specially at the rate in which Israel keeps stealing land from the other future “state” with impunity?
Most truly progressive circles today, both in Israel and in Palestine, feel that the real solution is not two states but actually a single and secular Palestine-Israel state with equal rights and protection under the law for both Jews and Arabs, and willing to justly address the question of the right of return of all displaced Palestinians. Perhaps not surprisingly, many Palestinians are ok with this, while most Israelis simply throw a fit at the very notion of surrendering the absolute power inherent in their present Jewish dominated fascist apartheid system.
So, in terms of a morale boost, and perhaps even in its broadest possible political perspective, this move by Sweden may still indeed be a good thing for many Palestinians and their allies. Realistically, in my opinion, it still leaves unaddressed all the inherent power imbalances pertaining to any negotiations, specially as it refers to this growingly unrealistic notion of a two state solution, between Empire supported Israel, in a position of complete social and economic dominance and physical occupation on the one hand, and the weakened and insular Palestinian Authority on the other. Not only with no allies to speak of, but politically at odds with large sectors of Palestinian civil society even in its own West Bank stronghold, the PA has also been more than happy to leave half of their supposed future country out of the negotiating process. Gazans and their democratically elected Hamas leadership need not apply to “negotiate” their own future…
A fictitious two state solution negotiated under the same corrupt and unjust conditions of always is in no way capable of providing even a basic road map towards a real sustainable solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, much less produce a truly just outcome for the whole of Palestinian society.
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