TABLET MAG
by Yair Rosenberg
May 13, 2015

But some media outlets, beginning with the AP, wrote otherwise

Other outlets quickly picked up the AP’s story or hammered out their own version. Vox’s “Pope Francis just officially recognized Palestine as a state” offers a representative headline. Soon, the move was being alternatively celebrated and condemned by anti-Israel activists, the Anti-Defamation League, and even members of Congress. But there was just one small problem with the news driving the whole hullabaloo: the Vatican had actually recognized Palestine in 2012, after it declared statehood at the United Nations.This fact, which is evident from a cursory search of the Vatican’s official news service, was quickly noted by several experts in Palestinian politics. Others observed that during his trip last May to Israel and Palestine, Pope Francis had explicitly heralded the “good relations existing between the Holy See and the State of Palestine.” As Ramallah-based journalist and former Al Jazeera producer Dalia Hatuqa put it: “For years, Vatican has referred to it as State of Palestine. Nothing new here.” READ MORE