Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thanked his Czech counterpart for being the only EU member state to vote Friday against the UN General Assembly resolution upgrading the Palestinian status in the world body to a "non-member observer state."
Netanyahu's office praised the Czech vote and said the Israeli Prime Minister will visit Prague this week en route to the annual government-to-government meeting in Germany on Thursday to personally thank his Czech counterpart Petr Necas.
Netanyahu spoke over the weekend with Necas and thanked him for his country’s “courageous UN vote against the Palestinian Authority’s request.”
"The history of Israel and the Czech Republic has taught us that one must cling to the truth even if the majority is not with you," Netanyahu said. "Your vote must serve as an example for all those who support peace, which can be achieved only via direct negotiations without preconditions."
"That the Czechs sided with Israel and the United States demonstrates the importance that Prague attaches to the transatlantic alliance, as it was willing to buck its fellow EU members and side with Washington on a controversial issue", one specialist said.
"The vote also shows the affinity that the Czech Republic has long felt for Israel, an affinity that dates at least from the visit that Tomas Masaryk, the first President of independent Czechoslovakia, made to Palestine in 1927, through communist Czechoslovakia’s supply of weapons to the Jewish State in the 1948 War of Independence, the presidency of Vaclav Havel (whose second visit as president of free Czechoslovakia was to Israel), up to the present day”.
Netanyahu has made two visits to Prague in the last two years. On his most recent trip earlier this year–for a joint cabinet summit- he declared that Israel has "no better friends in Europe than the Czech Republic." "Nowhere else in Europe is Israel so well understood," he said.
Czech Prime Minister Necas has stressed that "the long-term Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved only through direct negotiations of the two parties." "The Czech Republic does not support unilateral steps that cannot contribute to the peace process in the Middle East."
Defying the European Union’s growing criticism of Israel in 2009, the country came out in support of Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’, saying the Jewish state has the right to defend itself from attacks from Gaza.
Friday's resolution was passed with 138 votes in favor, nine against, and 41 abstentions on November 29. Czechs joined the United States, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Panama.
Fourteen EU countries voted in favour: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
While Israel was disappointed at how the EU voted, especially Italy which voted for the Palestinian upgrade, 12 EU countries did abstain. With the exception of Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, all the other abstentions came from the Central, Eastern European and Baltic countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Another nine non-EU European states also abstained: Albania, a Muslim country with whom Israel has developed close ties over the last couple of years, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Monaco, Montenegro, Moldova, San Marino.