(JTA) – The regional council of Paris passed a motion favoring French recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The Ile-De-France Regional Council voted to approve the draft motion submitted by the Green Party, according to the mediapart.fr news website.
The motion, which received the support of several left-leaning parties, urges the French government to “recognize without delay Palestine as an independent country, sovereign and democratic, on the basis of the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as capital of both countries,” with reference to Israel.
The vote on Saturday night in the Ile-De-France region occurred ahead of the Dec. 2 vote on a similar motion in France’s National Assembly, the republic’s lower house. Similar motions have passed in Britain’s House of Commons and Ireland’s upper house. Spain’s Congress passed a motion earlier this month saying Spain would recognize a Palestinian state after its establishment is agreed upon in talks with Israel.
All the motions are nonbinding. Another nonbinding motion favoring recognition of a Palestinian state is set to be voted on in the European Parliament next month. Also next month, Denmark’s lower house will hold a debate on the matter in preparation for a vote in January, according to the news website euobserver.com.
Sweden is the European Union’s only country that recognizes a state which it calls Palestine.
During the Ile-de-France vote, the centrist UMP and UDI parties abstained, according to Europe 1.
“This is not the venue to debate this subject,” said Valerie Pecresse, a regional lawmaker for UMP. “Regional representatives are not the ones who should be sorting out this question. I think there is a tendency to divert our regional institution from its real purpose, including fighting pollution and creating jobs.”
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