Latin America Picks Palestine

Matt Gurney
frontpagemag.com
20 December '10

Over the last two weeks, emerging global powers Brazil and Argentina have both given diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, existing within the 1967 borders and with a capital city in Jerusalem. This understandably annoyed the Israelis, who have been struggling to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians for decades. Given that every reasonable observer agrees that any Israeli-Palestinian peace accord will involve some border adjustments and territory swaps, it is odd that Brazil and Argentina would choose to recognize a Palestinian state as existing on territory that even the Palestinians would likely concede, if only off the record, will remain Israeli under any settlement.

Argentina and Brazil are not significant players in the Middle East. As the Israelis correctly point out, neither of them has played any part in the peace process, so their input, while welcome news for the Palestinian negotiators, is entirely symbolic. Argentina even tacitly admitted the entirely symbolic nature of their recognition when they said they recognized Palestine because it had a right to become a state — in other words, they’re recognizing it as a state today in the hopes it will become one tomorrow. A rather strange use of diplomacy, but not unprecedented in recent times — recall the choice to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a President who had probably not even finished unpacking from his move into the White House when the decision was reached.

The move by the Latin American nations is unlikely to have any impact whatsoever on the achingly slow progress of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

(Read full "Latin America Picks Palestine")

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