A Kirklees MP stepped in to ensure a historic vote went ahead in the Commons.
Batley and Spen MP Mike Wood feared opponents would use a Parliamentary trick to stop a crucial vote on Palestine going ahead.
Votes in Parliament can only go ahead if two MPs from each side offer to be tellers, to count the votes. The Tories and those opposed to recognition attempted to engineer a defeat for the motion by refusing to nominate two tellers.
But after speaking in favour of recognising Palestine Mr Wood and his Labour party colleague Jeremy Corbyn MP came to the rescue.
The vote was allowed to go after Mr Wood and Mr Corbyn, the MP for Islington North, stepped up and offered to be tellers for the opposing side to ensure the vote went ahead. The motion was approved by 274 votes to 12.
Speaking in the debate Mr Wood said the occupation of Palestine and exile of Palestinians had to end and warned that the two-state solution was disappearing rapidly before our very eyes.
“Apartheid is regularly referred to as a parallel to what is going on in Palestine, but the situation in Palestine is much worse than apartheid,” said Mr Wood.
“There is no place in Israel and Palestine for the Palestinians. We have to face squarely what that means and so do the Israelis. That is even more reason why we should not give the Israelis a veto over Palestinian statehood.
“We will be voting for the recognition of a Palestinian state. That is not just about recognising the inalienable right of Palestinians to freedom and self-determination but about Israel’s need to be saved from itself.
“What Israel is looking at in a one-state solution is a continuation, year after year, of war and violence such as we have seen building in the past 20 years. The Israelis have just finished a third incursion into Gaza in 10 years. Are we suggesting that every two years another 1,500 people should be killed and another 100,000 people rendered homeless as a continuation of the process of driving everybody who is not Jewish out of what is considered to be greater Israel?
Mr Corbyn said: “The House has voted emphatically tonight to support the recognition of the Palestinian state. That is good news, which will be well received by many people, and we should bear witness to those thousands who marched and demonstrated and those thousands who e-mailed us.
“Mike Wood and I were tellers for a position that we do not actually hold. It was to ensure that democracy could take place and that Members could record their vote, because those who were opposed to the motion declined to put up tellers”.
