Lhe State of Palestine was proclaimed in November 1988 by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) during a solemn session of the Palestinian National Council in Algiers. This State, from its founding act, affirms “ believe in the settlement of regional and international conflicts by peaceful means “, just as he ” condemns violence and terrorism “. He considers that the plan to divide Palestine by the UN, in November 1947, between a Jewish state (on 55% of the territory) and an Arab state (on 45%) confers a “international legitimacy” to the “right of the Palestinian people to sovereignty and independence”. However, such a plan was then rejected by the Arab side, at the same time as it was approved by the Zionist leadership, which led to a civil war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine under British mandate. At the expiration of this mandate, in May 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed by a ” National Council Representing the Jewish People of Palestine and the World Zionist Movement “.
The first wave of recognition
Israel’s Declaration of Independence explicitly relied on the UN Partition Plan to establish ” an independent Jewish state in Palestine “. However, it did not mention a possible Arab state, a prospect in fact buried at the end, in 1949, of the first Israeli-Arab conflict: 77% of Palestine was incorporated into the new State of Israel, 22% was annexed by the Jordan and the remaining 1% was administered by Egypt as the “Gaza Strip”. It is on these 23% of territories occupied in 1967 by Israel, after the Six-Day War, that the PLO plans, two decades later, to establish the State of Palestine. The proclamation of Algiers was followed by the recognition of Palestine by more than half of the members of the UN.
The French president, François Mitterrand, considers that he “ One day the people of Israel and Palestine will have to live together as neighbors. » and decided, without going as far as recognition, to elevate the Paris office of the PLO to the rank of “ general delegation » of Palestine. Syria stands out from other Arab countries by refusing to recognize Palestine, due to the virulent hostility of the Assad regime towards the PLO. As for the Islamic Republic of Iran, its formal recognition of Palestine does not affect its support for the factions opposed to the PLO, foremost among them Hamas.
Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, accomplished, in September 1993, the historic gesture of mutual recognition of their respective nationalism. But these ” Oslo Accords » remain silent on the question of the Palestinian state, which is supposed to be decided after an interim period of five years. With talks stalled, in March 1999, the European Union (EU) “ expresses its conviction that the creation of a democratic, viable and peaceful Palestinian state, on the basis of existing agreements and through negotiations, would be the best guarantee of Israel’s security “. This bet on the negotiations means that no member of the EU takes the step of recognizing Palestine.
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