Parliament lines up resolution on recognition of Palestine

A draft resolution asking the government to recognize Palestine as a state is to be submitted to Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Thursday.

The resolution has been drawn up by SYRIZA ahead of the visit by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Athens on December 21 and 22.

The nonbinding resolution is designed more as a symbolic gesture than a practical intervention.

This is underlined by the fact that it calls on the government to recognize “a Palestinian state” rather than “the Palestinian state,” highlighting the government’s reluctance to strain relations with Israel, especially as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is due to visit Tel Aviv on January 27, a day before the leaders of Greece, Israel and Cyprus hold a tripartite summit in Nicosia.

Sources told Kathimerini that the resolution is not designed to pave the way for the recognition of Palestine, as happened in Sweden in October 2014.

Instead, it is designed to be more like the votes taken by the parliaments of France and Belgium.