Seven months after the Israeli invasion of Gaza, which has caused the death of 35,000 Palestinians – a third of them children – Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu faces the moment of greatest external and internal pressure. Added to the request for arrest by the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) or the threat by opposition leader Benny Gantz to leave the war cabinet, is the cascading recognition of the Palestinian State by several European countries, including Spain.
The recognition was announced this Wednesday, in a coordinated manner and a few minutes apart, by the heads of government of Spain, Norway and Ireland and will be materialized on May 28, also jointly. Slovenia, Luxembourg, Malta and Belgium are considering joining the initiative.
With Spain and Ireland, there will be four EU members that endorse the Palestinian State. They will join Cyprus and Sweden, which until now were the only members that had recognized Palestine, in 2011 and 2014 respectively, when they were already part of the European club. Other EU states recognized Palestine prior to EU membership; specifically, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – when they were united in Czechoslovakia –, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, which recognized under the communist regime. Malta also recognized Palestine in 1988, but its own Government does not consider it valid and is now considering doing so.
“There can be no peace in the Middle East without Israel and Palestine having their own state, it is the only real solution to the conflict,” Norway’s Labor Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said at a press conference in Oslo.
Within a few minutes of each other, in Dublin, the conservative taoiseach Simon Harris made the announcement, ensuring that Israel “loses nothing” with the recognition. “We need the two-state solution, a solution that recognizes the State of Israel, that recognizes the State of Palestine,” said Harris, accompanied by his two partners in the coalition of Christian Democrats, centrists and Greens, expressing confidence that this decision contributes to “permanent peace” in the Middle East.
Almost at the same time, from the tribune of Congress, Spanish President Pedro Sánchez said that “the time had come to move from words to action” and that Palestinian recognition echoes the “majority sentiment of the Spanish people.”
As expected, Israel did not waste a second in launching all its cavalry against the three governments and called its ambassadors in Madrid, Oslo and Dublin for consultations. “Ireland and Norway intend to send a message to the Palestinians and the entire world today: terrorism is worth it,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement before the Spanish announcement. “We are not deterred by the Irish-Norwegian parade of nonsense, we are determined to achieve our objectives: to restore the security of our citizens with the elimination of Hamas and the return of the abductees,” Katz added.
After Sánchez’s speech, Israel also called the Israeli ambassador in Spain for consultations and summoned the Spanish ambassador. “They have decided to award a gold medal to the Hamas murderers,” denounced Katz, alluding to the terrorist attacks of October 7.
Instead, the triple announcement was welcomed from the Palestinian side. The president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, applauded the coordinated decision and stated that it is a contribution to the materialization of the two-state solution in order to end the conflict with Israel. The decision “is consistent with the principles of international law, which recognizes the right of peoples to free themselves from colonialism and oppression and to live with freedom, justice and independence,” Abas said, according to the official agency WAFA.
For his part, the secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hussein al-Sheikh, reacted by saying that we are living in “historic moments in which the free world triumphs.” Al Sheikh assured that the decision of Spain, Norway and Ireland comes “after long decades of Palestinian national struggle, suffering, pain, racism, death, oppression, abuse and destruction to which the people of Palestine has been subjected.”
Hamas also congratulated itself. In a statement, the extremist group indicated that the recognition of the Palestinian State is an “important step” to establish “the right to their land” with the aim of having “Jerusalem as their capital.” The Palestinian party, whose military wing fights against Israel in Gaza, called on the rest of the countries to “support the cause of the Palestinian people for liberation and independence” and to “end the Zionist occupation.”
Yesterday’s multiple recognition unleashed the anger of the Israeli extreme right, which is part of Netanyahu’s Government. In a new provocative gesture, the Minister of Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, yesterday visited the esplanade of the Jerusalem Mosques, where he recorded a video. “The countries that recognized a Palestinian state this morning (yesterday) want to give a reward to the kidnappers of soldiers in observation posts and their many supporters in Gaza,” Ben Gvir said in the recording.
And the Minister of Finance, the ultra settler Bezalel Smotrich, proposed that the Government take several measures in retaliation; the most striking, creating a new settlement in the occupied territories by each nation that recognizes the Palestinian State.
