Belgium works to recognize Palestine state

(MENAFN- Arab News) BRUSSELS: Belgian legislators are working on a resolution to recognize a Palestinian state but the government says any timing to proceed will depend on European Union action.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said he first would push for a new EU initiative to bring Israel and the Palestinian authorities back to the negotiating table to reinvigorate the peace process.

Belgian legislators are completing work on a text and it was still unclear when the resolution would be tabled said an official from a leading coalition party who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was continuing.

On Tuesday France's lower house already voted to urge the government to recognize a Palestinian state. On Oct. 30 Sweden became the first western European nation to recognize Palestinian statehood.

Meanwhile an Israeli security guard shot a Palestinian teenager who stabbed two people in a supermarket near a settlement in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.

The incident occurred in the Rami Levi supermarket near Maale Adumim a large settlement east of Jerusalem.

Police said the two people stabbed by the attacker whom they identified as a 16-year-old Palestinian were taken to hospital with moderate injuries. The condition of the assailant was not immediately clear.