Spanish Congress votes for recognising Palestinian state

The Spanish Congress voted by 319 votes with just two against and one abstention in favour of a proposal to "urge the government to recognise the state of Palestine as a subject of international law".

The vote Tuesday evening means Spain becomes one of the few European countries to move towards formal recognition of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The resolution also urged the Spanish government to press for the two-state solution in the European Union, while "fully taking into account the legitimate concerns, interests and aspirations of the state of Israel", Xinhua reported.

Although the vote was passed with the votes of nearly all of the representatives in the Congress, the ruling People's Party (PP) and the Socialists (PSOE) agreed not to admit an amendment which would have set a deadline for Spain to recognise a Palestine state before the end of the current parliamentary mandate at the end of November 2015.

Proposals to demand that Israel return to its 1967 borders were also rejected, although Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo commented that he hoped the "historic session" would "unblock a negotiation process that has been stopped for too many years".

Representatives of the Palestinian Authority in Spain were in attendance in the visitors' gallery in the Congress, while the Israeli ambassador in Spain was not present.