On Oct. 3, coinciding with the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, newly elected Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced that his government would recognize the state of Palestine.
A review of Palestinian history shows that the international community approved its establishment as a state long ago.
In 1947, the UN General Assembly recommended that the UK, as the mandatory power in Palestine, implement a partition plan that would divide greater Palestine into three entities — an Arab state, a Jewish state and a “special international regime for the city of Jerusalem.”
However, while the state of Israel was quickly established, the processes of setting up the Arab state and the regime in Jerusalem were interrupted by war.
The UN General Assembly recognized Palestinian sovereignty in November 2012 and more than 100 countries now recognize Palestine. However, Sweden is the first current EU member state to have done so. This makes Sweden’s decision highly significant. Israel’s frenzied onslaught against Palestinian civilians during the past few months prompted Sweden to reconsider its policy.
In announcing the move, Lofven said: “The conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be solved with a two-state solution, negotiated in accordance with international law. A two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to peaceful coexistence. Sweden will therefore recognize the state of Palestine.”
Lofven’s use of the terms “two-state solution” and “mutual recognition” to describe prospective relations between Israel and Palestine highlights that, while the international community keeps pressing Israel and Palestine to sit down together and resolve their disputes, they ignore t that negotiations between a non-state and a state can only be a sham.
Under such circumstances, Palestine cannot arrive at what diplomatic language so attractively terms a “two-state solution.”
As the victor in the Pacific theater in World War II, the US became the custodian of Taiwan’s freedom. In 1972, in order to end the Vietnam War and normalize relations with China, the US irresponsibly signed the Shanghai Communique with Beijing, agreeing that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait” should settle their differences by themselves. Since then, the US has repeatedly used arms sales as a carrot and stick to encourage the two sides of the Taiwan Strait to handle their disputes through negotiations.
However, one of the two sides is an internationally recognized state, while the other is not, and one of them is much bigger than the other. These disparities make negotiations between China and Taiwan even more of a sham than those between Israel and Palestine.
Although Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty by the UK was arranged through negotiations between two evenly matched sovereign states, China has broken its promises, and its oppression of Hong Kong has led to the protests we now see.
What can the US do to transform cross-strait talks, which are even more difficult than talks between Israel and Palestine, into genuine negotiations? What can be done to prevent the kind of outcome now happening in Hong Kong?
If Taiwan’s leaders agree to Beijing’s every demand and forge ahead with negotiations, the US would not have time to do anything about it. That is the true face of the “non-state-to-state” relationship that exists between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
HoonTing is a political commentator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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