Palestine? Never heard of it.
Via Weekly Standard:
On November 29th the Icelandic parliament voted to recognize Palestine as a state. Yesterday, a ceremony was held in Reykjavik in the presence of the Icelandic and PLO foreign ministers. […]
As Iceland is the first European state that has given Palestine full recognition, the Palestinians are of course celebrating; and one can expect that Icelanders are also celebrating their own enlightenment and progressive thinking. “Iceland didn’t only talk the talk, we walked the walk. We stood by our word, we have supported the Palestinian cause and today will not be the end of that, we will continue to do so,” said the Icelandic foreign minister. He continued: “They have had setbacks in the Security Council and that is why we thought it would be right not to wait, but to go ahead now and I hope it will put some wind in their sails. . . it is very symbolic for them that a western European nation, which is also in NATO, should at this moment step forward and recognise the sovereignty of Palestine.”
In this context it is worth noting precisely what Iceland recognized, and it was Palestine within the “1967 borders.” That means that according to Iceland, Palestinian sovereignty includes 100 percent of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. Palestine, as Icelanders see it, includes the Western Wall of the Second Temple, Judaism’s holiest site. The judenrein policy enforced by Jordan during the years it ruled Jerusalem, would thus be reinstated. And Israel in any recognizable form would anyway disappear, for the Allthingi resolution calls for all Palestinian refugees — of whom according to the U.N. there are five million — to “return” to Israel. Finally, lest there be any of this nonsense about moral distinctions between U.N. member states and terrorist organizations, the resolution treats Israel and Hamas as equals by demanding that the “conflicting parties cease warfare and acts of violence forthwith.”