Labour party says backs Palestinian state ‘at right time’
British Labour Party leader says he will recognize Palestine as an independent state ‘at the right time,’ should he win the May 7 general election.
Ed Miliband said his party backed British MPs’ symbolic vote last year in favor of recognizing Palestine.
“What we said at the time of that vote was that it was a vote about the principle of recognition. And clearly a decision about when recognition would take place was dependent on how it would constructively help negotiations,” RT reported.
“I am not going to get into, today, speculation about when that would precisely be. That is a judgment we would have to take at the time.”
Miliband, who is of Jewish decent, visited Israel and the Palestinian Territories last April. During his visit to the West Bank, he said expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied territories posed “a mortal threat to the two-state solution.”
Following a visit to a Bedouin camp, he said: “What I have seen today shows that the expansion of Israeli settlements on the Palestinian West Bank is not only wrong and illegal but represents a mortal threat to the two-state solution and to a successful outcome of the peace process.”
He added: “If we are going to have a viable, democratic Palestinian state, the more we see an expansion of settlements the more it becomes difficult to construct this state.”
Now Arzu Merali from the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London says, “You do have to questions these comments and the way that Ed Miliband seems to be on the one hand saying he will do this, and on the other hand trying to reassure another set of voters that there will be conditions and it won’t happen straight away unconditionally.”
“Ed Miliband’s comments are positive in the sense that Palestine now is becoming an issue that is not really just Muslim-specific, and it is something that the general public or at least the prime sections of the general public are interested in… however it’s taking a long time and this kind of double talk is not good enough for any political leader.”
Last October, British lawmakers voted to recognize Palestine as a state, a move that did not alter government policy, but carried symbolic value.
HRK/GHN
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