Resist the adoption of international treaties that could allow unelected institutions to have a chilling effect on government policy that is in the public interest of UK voters. A current example is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process in the TTIP treaty currently under negotiation[^1], which undermines democratic processes and could prevent the government taking action which benefits the UK if it causes potential losses for foreign investors.
The UK should join many other countries around the world, as well as the UN, and officially recognise Palestine as a sovereign state. This is in line with our existing national preference for a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict in accordance with international law.
@frankieroberto - over 9 years ago
Agreed on the principle, but is it better to do this unilaterally, or only alongside the EU or UN?
@frankieroberto The UN has de facto recognised it as a state already. It's mostly Europe and the US that don't, so it would be far from unilateral. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InternationalrecognitionoftheStateofPalestine
Is there a more general rule here about recognition, or must this always be a case-by-case decision?
I suspect it's a case-by-case thing, unless we tied ourselves to the UN, though their exact forms of recognition are many and varied as well, so I expect it's complicated.
What's the case for it here?
I have no particular opinion on this specific case, though I have a meta-concern that a lot of this sort of thing has significant implications on wider geopolitical issues (most notably used by Russia, but not restricted to that).
The UK position at the minute seems to be that its recognition is of sufficient value that it can be used as a bargaining chip in other discussions. That seems like quite a high-stakes game, but I'm not philosophically opposed to it.
OTOH, if the approach here is to get out of those sorts of games, I'd rather have at least more of a rule-of-thumb on how to make these decisions. How does the position on Palestine differ from, say, on Western Sahara?
Yep, they inspired this one :)
@tmtmtmtm agreed that a general rule would be sensible. I'd say we should follow the UN, but presumably there needs to be some sort of rule of at which point a state crosses the line to recognition. pretty sure Palestine is over it though. Recognition of Western Sahara lags a long way behind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InternationalrecognitionoftheSahrawiArabDemocratic_Republic
Perhaps the benchmark is observer status at the UN, as that allows Palestine to join various treaties, agencies, and the ICC. That puts it in the same state as the Vatican, which as far as I can tell, we do recognise as a state.
Interestingly (and unknown to me at the time) this is being debated in Parliament on Monday: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/backbench-business-committee/news/mps-debate-palestine-and-israel/
@philipjohn - over 9 years ago
Regardless of what any other institution or state thinks is best, whether long term or just in negotiating, it is right as a matter of principle to recognise Palestine as a state. The two-state solution can only start when the west begins to acknowledge that Palestine is a state and it's citizens deserve some common decency from the rest of the world.
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@Floppy - over 9 years ago