Ireland and Norway to Recognize Palestine; Sovereignty Movement Responds
Ireland and Norway announced their recognition of Palestine as a state on Wednesday morning, and Spain announced its intention to do so next Tuesday.
“Our step today, taken with Norway and Spain, is a further recognition of the legitimate right to statehood,” Ireland’s Prime Minister Simon Harris said. “It is a statement of unequivocal support for a two-state solution, the only credible path to peace and security for Israel, Palestine, and for their peoples.”
“We have previously said that recognition is a step we would ideally have taken as part of the process towards that goal,” he added.
The “two-state solution” would create an unprecedented militarized Arab state within the borders of Israel that has been ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem. While it has been adopted as the strategy for the region by the Biden administration, surveys show that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians alike do not support the plan.
“However, we are three decades after the Oslo process and perhaps further than ever from a just sustainable and comprehensive peace settlement,” Harris continued. “Our decision to recognize Palestine should not have to wait indefinitely,” Harris said.
Jonas Støre, the current Prime Minister of Norway, claimed his support for a Palestinian state was intended to bring peace between Israel and Hamas, despite Hamas officials making public statements of their intention to carry out continuous attacks on Israel.
“The ongoing war in Gaza has made it abundantly clear that achieving peace and stability must be predicated on resolving the Palestinian question,” Støre said. “The war is the lowest point in the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The situation in the Middle East has not been this grave for many years.”
(source: JNS)
“In the midst of a war, with tens of thousands killed and injured, we must keep alive the only alternative that offers a political solution for Israelis and Palestinians alike: Two states, living side by side, in peace and security,’ he explained.
“The Palestinian people have a fundamental, independent right to self-determination. Both Israelis and Palestinians have a right to live in peace in their respective states,” he said.
“There will be no peace in the Middle East without a two-state solution. There can be no two-state solution without a Palestinian state. In other words, a Palestinian state is a prerequisite for achieving peace in the Middle East,’ Støre stressed.
His statement ignores the reality of the Abraham Accords signed in 2020, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab nations without Israel forfeiting any territory.
He admitted that the governments of both Gaza (i.e., Hamas) and the Palestinian Authority had rejected the two-state solution.
“Recognition of Palestine is a means of supporting the moderate forces which have been losing ground in this protracted and brutal conflict,” Store said.
He did not clarify which “moderate forces” he was referring to. None of the governments recognizing a “Palestinian state” have specified the state’s borders. These declarations contradict the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, which require borders to be the result of bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Just a few weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, Støre rejected the Israeli aggression on Gaza and stated that it violated international laws of war, affirming the Palestinians’ “right to self-defense.”
143 out of 193 member-states of the United Nations have recognized a Palestinian state.
Israel responded by recalling the Israeli ambassadors in Ireland and Norway for immediate consultations.
“I am sending an unequivocal message to Ireland and Norway — Israel will not let this go quietly,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said. “Ireland and Norway intend to send a message to the Palestinians and the entire world — terror pays,” Katz said in a statement, adding that they are “giving a prize to Hamas and Iran.”
“The twisted step by these states is an affront to the victims of October 7,” he continues. “It also harms efforts to bring back the 128 hostages.”
The Sovereignty Movement, led by Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, released a video in response.
“To the Norwegian government, about your declaring your support for Palestinian state,” Matar said in the video. “We just want to make sure that you know what you’re supporting. You are supporting not only the destruction of the State of Israel, because that is the meaning of it. And you probably don’t care about that. But you’re also supporting the master plan of why [the Arabs] want the Palestinian state.”
Matar displayed a flag that the Palestinian Authority had displayed in Bethlehem in the early ‘90s. The PA, led by Yasser Arafat, was hoisting a pastor from South Africa, and they displayed this flag as he spoke. It should be noted that the pastor didn’t speak Arabic.
Written on the flag were the words, “yawm alsabt niqtal al yahudu. fi ‘ayaam ala hada. sawf niqtal almasihiiyn” which mean “On Saturdays, we will murder the Jews and on Sundays, we will murder the Christians.”
“They want the Palestinian state because of what is written here in Arabic, ” Matar continued in her video message to Norway. “They want a state to destroy Israel, and after destroying Israel, they want to come to you to Norway, to Sweden, to Europe, to America. That is the plan.”
“Anybody who supports the creation of a Palestinian state supports not only the destruction of the State of Israel, but also supports the destruction of Europe and the destruction of America.”
Matar held up two books.
“The world has to choose between two books, this book and that book. This book is the Holy Bible that God gave to the Jewish people, where he clearly stated that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel; that is one book. The other book is a history of the Palestinian people from ancient times to the modern era,” she said. “One hundred blank pages. The history of the Palestinian people doesn’t exist. The Palestinian people is an invention that was created in order to destroy the Jewish people.”
“Those who choose this Bible, those who choose to be on the side of the Jewish people, those who choose to bless Israel will be blessed, and those who choose to curse Israel will be badly cursed.”
The Sovereignty movement called on the government of Israel to respond to these calls to wrest the Biblical heartland from the Jewish people.
“The time has come to apply sovereignty and implement it on the Land of Israel!” they said.
The Regavim Movement reacted to the announcement.
“This is an old hatred in a new form,” Regavim stated. “These countries have been working against the State of Israel for years, using every possible means and twisting international law to serve their antisemitic agenda. They have fabricated facts and reality – and now, they have fabricated a state.”
“The absurd claim that only recognition of a Palestinian state “will bring about peace and security” has been utterly disproven by decades of murderous Palestinian terrorism against Jewish women, children, seniors and infants. If you pay lip service to peace and security while supporting and rewarding terrorism, don’t be surprised when those same terrorists come for you.”
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