The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, ended his tour of the Middle East this Friday, opening the door for Spain to recognize the Palestinian State and warning that if the European Union does not reach an agreement, Spain “will make its own decisions.” and reiterating that “the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians, including thousands of boys and girls, is totally unacceptable.”
These statements provoked a furious reaction from Israel, whose Minister of Foreign Affairs, Eli Cohen, ordered to summon the ambassadors of Spain and Belgium – the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo, accompanies Sánchez on the trip – for a harsh reprimand conversation. .
“The time has come for the international community, and especially European countries, to make a decision on the recognition of the Palestinian State. It would be worth doing it together, but if that does not happen, of course Spain will make its own decisions.” Sánchez told journalists on the last stage of his tour at the Rafah crossing, the southern gate of the Gaza Strip, the tour of the Middle East with which he kicks off his international agenda in this new mandate.
Until now, Sánchez had ruled out unilateral recognition by Spain of the Palestinian State, always conditioning it on it being a decision shared with other European partners. But today he went one step further, contemplating such unilateral recognition of Spain, if the international community and the EU delay this decision.
The Israeli reaction was devastating. After ordering to summon the ambassadors of Spain and Belgium, Cohen condemned “the false claims of the prime ministers of Spain and Belgium that they support terrorism” and defended that Israel is acting “in accordance with international law and fighting a murderous terrorist organization “worse than ISIS that commits war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
“We will resume fighting after the ceasefire until the elimination of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and the release of all those kidnapped,” he added.
Likewise, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu harshly condemned the comments of both Sánchez and De Croo, alleging that the two leaders “did not attribute full responsibility to Hamas for the crimes against humanity it perpetrated, massacring Israeli citizens and using the Palestinians as human shields.
From Madrid, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, was forceful when declaring the accusations of the Israeli government towards the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, for which he announced that there will be, from the Government, “the appropriate response”, from the diplomatic point of view.
According to Albares, “the accusations of the Israeli government” towards the President of the Spanish Government and the Belgian Prime Minister “are false and unacceptable”, which is why the Government “firmly rejects” them. The Foreign Minister assures that the Government is already analyzing “the appropriate response, and there will be a response to these false accusations, which are out of place and unacceptable.”
For the Spanish Executive, the accusations are “especially serious” due to the fact that not only the President of the Spanish Government and the Belgian Prime Minister are attacked, but also the current President of the European Union and the one who will be president from 1 from January.
Albarés recalled that since October 7, the Spanish president “does not hesitate to condemn the terrorist attack by Hamas, making it clear that it does not represent the Palestinian people and is only a terrorist organization.” According to the minister, this is what he has expressed in Israel, at the same time that he showed his solidarity with the Israeli victims, among whom are the two murdered Spaniards. He also highlighted that Pedro Sánchez has always called for “unconditional and immediate liberalization without distinction of nationality.”
The minister assures that the President of the Government has also always stressed Israel’s right to defend itself, which is not incompatible with the fact that this defense “must be done “within scrupulous international humanitarian law.” And he has raised his voice to emphasize that the Palestinian population must be protected and to emphasize that there are “an unbearable number” of civilian victims.
The Rafah crossing, the border between Egypt and Gaza and one of the epicenters of the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s military offensive – where this Friday the exchange of Jewish hostages for Palestinian prisoners was launched – thus impressed Sánchez so much such as, the day before, the visit he made to the Be’eri kibbutz, one of those that suffered the most from the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7.
In the morning, Sánchez and the Prime Minister of Belgium, Alexander de Croo, who shared the tour as current and next presidents of the EU Council, visited Egyptian President Al Sisi, one of the key actors, in Cairo. in the region, and in the negotiations that achieved the uncertain truce agreed between Israel and Hamas, for the exchange of hostages for prisoners.
The Spanish president explained to the Egyptian Rais that the day before he visited with De Croo the top political leaders of Israel and Palestine, Beniamin Netanyahu and Mahmud Abbas. “The terrible traces of the terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on October 7 are testimony to the cruelest facet of humanity. But the answer cannot be the death of innocent civilians in Gaza, including thousands of children,” Sánchez warned Al Yes Yes.
And, before moving to the Rafah border crossing, he denounced that “more than two million people are trapped in the horrors of war” in Gaza. So one of the messages he conveyed to the Egyptian president was the same one he conveyed to the Prime Minister of Israel the day before: “We must stop this humanitarian catastrophe.”
Sánchez is very aware that the political process in search of being able to implement the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, will be long and very complex. But it is his firm bet, although the process cannot take flight until, to begin with, the armed conflict ceases. The Prime Minister of Israel, in Sánchez’s opinion, is not yet in this position.
“Netanyahu is in a position of war, his language and his objectives are warlike, while he is waiting for the release of hostages,” according to the Spanish president. “He is in a logic of war,” Sánchez admitted in an informal conversation with the journalists who accompanied him on this tour.
The conversation between Sánchez and Netanyahu was frank, without subterfuge. The Spanish leader is one of the international leaders who most forcefully denounces the massacre of innocent civilians, many of them children, in the face of Israeli attacks. “We must tell friendly countries the truth,” justifies the Spanish president.
But for now Netanyahu is only in the “logic of war”, in Sánchez’s opinion. “Hamas is Hitler and we must put an end to Hamas,” justifies the prime minister of the Hebrew State. But if the release of Jewish hostages continues and the truce is strengthened, a “turning point” could occur, they believe in Moncloa.