Desk Report:
Portugal has announced its recognition of the state of Palestine, following Australia, Canada, France and the UK. The Portuguese Foreign Ministry announced this in a statement on Friday. It said that the formal announcement in this regard will be made before next week’s high-level conference.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the recognition will be made on Sunday, September 21. A day later, a high-level conference on the state of Palestine will begin at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
A report in Portugal’s Correo da Manha newspaper said that the country’s center-right Prime Minister Luis Montenegro consulted with the president and parliament before finalizing the decision.
During a visit to the UK this week, Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel said that his country was considering recognizing the state of Palestine.
The left-wing government of neighboring Spain recognized the state of Palestine in May 2024, along with Ireland and Norway, and called on other EU countries to do the same. But Portugal has taken a more cautious approach. It first sought to reach a common position with other EU countries.
Only a handful of the 27 EU member states have recognised Palestine as a state. Most of them are former communist states, as well as Sweden and Cyprus.
The Portuguese government announced for the first time in July that it planned to recognise a Palestinian state. It said the decision was prompted by the “extremely worrying situation” of the conflict, the humanitarian crisis and Israel’s repeated threats to annex Palestinian territory.
Portugal’s recognition announcement comes as a landmark UN investigation has concluded that Israel’s operation in Gaza amounts to genocide.
Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, which has been under siege since 7 October 2023, has killed at least 65,141 people and injured 165,925. Thousands of people are believed to be buried under the rubble.
Meanwhile, after the US denied Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a visa, 145 countries including Portugal voted on Friday to allow the Palestinian president to address the UN General Assembly in New York next week via video link. Nauru, Palau, Paraguay, Israel and the US voted against, while six abstained.
In November 2012, the UN General Assembly upgraded Palestine’s observer status from “entity” to “non-member state”, effectively recognising the state of Palestine.
As of April this year, 75 per cent of the UN’s member states, or around 147 countries, had recognised the state of Palestine. Portugal will now join these countries.
Israel and the US have strongly criticised the move to recognise Palestine. Earlier last year, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smitrich warned that for every country that recognizes Palestine, one new illegal Israeli settlement would be established in the occupied West Bank.
