This is NOT Recognition – Miko Peled

15 December 2014

 - There has always been a Palestine, whether European countries recognise Palestine or not.

As Miko Peled “the general’s son”, explains in this piece, the ongoing debate about whether Palestine is a “state” is a distraction from the real issue, which is whether the world’s governments should be continuing to actually recognise the illegitimate state of Israel, artificially created after the Second World War.

“There is now, according to some European countries, a Palestinian state. Look, there must be one for even Britain and Sweden and a few others have recognized it, and they even have a “President!” Never mind the fact that nothing has changed. Gaza is still under siege with no end in sight, Palestinian prisoners are wasting away in the colonizers’ jails, armed Israeli mobs and the terrorist organization known as the IDF are terrorizing Palestinians, in the Israeli Knesset racist laws are being passed and not one refugee is allowed to return. We would all be wise to remember that the recognition of a “State” that does not exist in order to numb the resistance to a racist, colonialist regime is not new. It has been used by Europeans in Africa and former colonies in other parts of the world and it is always welcomed by liberals among the colonialists.

Those of us who care and indeed struggle for justice in Palestine would do well not to fall for the old colonial tricks. Rather we should demand recognition that Israel is occupied Palestine, that all Israeli towns and cities are illegal settlements, and that it is time to free Palestine and its people from the illegitimate colonialist regime known as Israel…”