Estonia Rejects Palestine's Appeal for Independence
Foreign Minister Urmas Paet declared in New York on September 20 that Estonia does not support the Palestinian request for full membership in the UN.
The foreign ministers of the EU, meeting for the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly, are discussing how to react to Palestine's appeal, which the US said it will veto.
The director of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, Andres Kasekamp, said Estonia took its standard approach, aligning itself with its most powerful ally, the US.
Kasekamp did not agree that Estonians have the moral obligation to support Palestine's appeal to the UN. "Palestine's situation is dissimiliar to ours 20 years ago. There are a lot of differences," he said.
Drawing parallels to Estonia's feat of independence from the Soviet Union, Kasekamp recalled that the US only recognized Estonia's re-independence until after Russia had done so.
At the UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister Paet said unilateral steps would only complicate the Israel-Palestine peace process. "The most important thing to do is to restore direct negotiations between Iisrael and Palestine,“ said Paet. "Only that will enable a two-state solution so that Iisrael and Palestine can coexist as good neighbors."
The foreign policy expert Kasekamp said that, as Israel's relations with Egypt and Turkey are also heated, Palestine has this time forced Israel into a corner, forcing the latter to re-open negotiations - or deteriorate to a new conflict.
"The Palestinians took this extreme step because the negotiations are in a stalemate. Palestine was forced into trying something new to gain attention and pressure the process to continue. It is a desperate attempt,“ said Kasekamp. "They are definitely trying to shove Iisrael so that it comes to understand how isolated it is in this issue."
Ott Tammik