Spain and Israel are entering into a diplomatic crisis this Friday following the visit of Spanish President Pedro Sánchez to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Egypt. Israel has summoned Spain’s ambassador to that country for consultations – an expression of diplomatic rebuke – over comments Sánchez made in Rafah, the Egyptian city on the Gaza border. The President then emphasized: “I reaffirm Israel’s right to defend itself, but within the parameters and limitations imposed by international humanitarian law. And that is not the case. The indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians, including thousands of children, is completely unacceptable. Violence will only lead to more violence. We must replace violence with hope and peace.” The Israeli authorities believe that these statements “support terrorism.” This Israeli reaction has astonished the Spanish government, which it considers unjustified.
Shortly after these words, Israel’s Foreign Ministry released a statement saying it had summoned the Spanish ambassador for consultations on a “tough reprimand talk” following the “false statements” made by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself also brought charges against Sánchez and his traveling companion, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. In a statement, his comments “strongly condemn” because “they do not place full responsibility on Hamas for the crimes against humanity it has committed: the massacre of Israeli civilians and the use of Palestinians as human shields.”
This move surprised the Spanish delegation accompanying Sánchez. Just in Rafah, Sánchez said that he was very touched by the testimony of a young Jewish man in the Beeri kibbutz who returned there after surviving the attacks to rebuild the place and return to work. As in previous interventions, Sánchez has condemned the “terrible Hamas terrorist attacks” in Rafah, and that is why these sources consulted in the Spanish government do not understand that Israel can make these accusations. Despite the differences between the two governments, Spain considers Israel an ally. The sources consulted believe that the message sent this Friday by Rafah is no harsher than the one sent personally to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this Thursday, without triggering this Israeli reaction.
This controversy ends Pedro Sánchez’s first international trip after obtaining investiture for the third time. The head of government is the European head of state who, before Netanyahu himself, criticized the bombing of civilians in Gaza most strongly. And on the final leg of this journey, which culminated in Egypt, the Spanish president sent a clear political message by opening the door for Spain to recognize Palestine as a state, even if the entire EU does not. “It is time for the international community, and in particular the EU, to make a decision on recognizing the Palestinian state. It would be worthwhile, it would be important for many EU members to do it together. But if that doesn’t happen, Spain will of course make its own decisions,” he said during an appearance in Rafah, the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt through which humanitarian aid linked to the ceasefire passes.
Hours earlier, Sánchez had offered further Spanish help from Cairo to the displaced Palestinians. Egypt was the latest stop in a journey full of political gestures in which it has shown that it is the European leader who is putting the most pressure on Israel to agree to a longer-lasting ceasefire than the four-day truce that began this Friday.
Sánchez, who sees the far-right around him gaining electoral victories – Argentina and the Netherlands only this week – returns to Spain after two intense days with a clear message in his international politics: he is clear that Israel is an ally has done everything necessary to prove it to them – he has expressed his solidarity with the Israeli people, declared that they have the right to defend themselves, visited their political leaders, met with relatives of the abductees and a made a moving visit to Kibbutz Beeri, the epicenter of the massacre. Hamas. But he also wants to lead the current in Europe, which includes a large part of the progressives, but not only those, who reject Netanyahu’s policy of total war in Gaza with more than 14,000 dead, including 5,000 minors, according to the report by Hamas authorities . The President of the Government took the opportunity to announce the delivery of four tons of medical supplies to the Egyptian hospitals caring for refugees from Gaza and to guarantee that Spain will further increase its humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, which has already tripled. until it gets close to 50 million euros.
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That position, which led him to openly tell Netanyahu that the number of Palestinian deaths was “unbearable” and call on him to “stop the humanitarian catastrophe,” sparked a response from the Israeli prime minister, who openly claims Hamas is “the new Hitler”. “And they will not stop the war until they destroy their power in Gaza. The contrast was seen in public – Sánchez said Spain knew from ETA’s experience that “terrorism cannot be eradicated solely by force”, while Netanyahu said that “if we do not fight the barbarians, they will win” – but it was evenly stronger privately. Sánchez himself admitted in an informal conversation on the plane with the journalists who accompanied him on the trip that the meeting he and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo had with Netanyahu was “hard, very hard.” Not only because of the distance between the positions between the Europeans and the Israelis, which was very obvious, but also because it began with the projection of a video of about 20 minutes so that the two European leaders could see the horrors of the Hamas terrorist attack . .
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) greeted Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez before Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo during their meeting in Jerusalem on Thursday.BORJA PUIG DE LA BELLACASA (AFP)
Sánchez and De Croo were very shocked while Netanyahu explained the details to them. These are explicit images, the deaths of adults and children, recorded by home cameras and by the terrorists themselves, some of whom brag about the massacre. Then Sánchez and De Croo visited the kibbutz with an Israeli soldier who had the same idea as Netanyahu: “It is pure evil, they even killed the dogs, so much evil is unimaginable.” Sánchez and De Croo have their political ideas has not changed that nothing justifies the bombing of civilians and the deaths of thousands of children. However, the Israeli authorities managed to make the two leaders understand the absolute shock that the massacre has caused in Israel and the desire for revenge and, above all, an end to Hamas that it has provoked.
Netanyahu doesn’t want a peace conference
“It is logical to feel compassion after watching this video,” the president said. Later, the two went to Ramallah to also understand the Palestinian vision, but what they could not do was enter the Gaza Strip – Israel does not allow anyone to do this, apart from very limited and short missions by the international press to the Israeli one Army – in order to also understand the suffering of the Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip. Sánchez and De Croo failed to convince Netanyahu of the idea of reducing tensions and considering a peace conference. “He is in a belligerent position. There is war, although there are now expectations associated with this ceasefire. He has that in his head, he’s not thinking about a peace conference. They want a solution that includes mutual recognition,” emphasizes Sánchez. That means the Palestinians recognize Israel.
The final leg of the trip included a meeting in Cairo with Abdel Fatah Al Sisi, the Egyptian leader who is playing a major role in the crisis. Al Sisi emphasized that his country flatly rejects the possibility of relocating Gaza citizens to Egypt. His regime fears that the massive influx of refugees with a strong Hamas presence will destabilize his country. “We will not accept forced displacement that leads to security problems like those in Libya or Yemen,” I have already warned [al presidente de EE UU, Joe] Biden and he agree,” he said. Al Sisi thanked Sánchez very much for “his views on the situation in Gaza” and recalled that more than 50,000 houses in the Gaza Strip were destroyed by the bombings. Al Sisi recalled that the international community has been talking about the two-state solution for 30 years and has made no progress.
The positions of the Spanish, Belgians and Egyptians appeared to be close, particularly on the idea of recognizing the Palestinian state. But his pessimistic tone shows that it will be very difficult to reach this solution. The message of the trip is that Spain remains an ally of Israel but wants to lead efforts to convince its government that it will not be able to eradicate terrorism by force and that its response is disproportionate.
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