Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s words hardly match the scale or urgency of the situation, but in the context of the complicity across the EU in the Gaza genocide, at least it’s something.
Nick Corbishley is a journalist and author of ‘Scanned’.
Cross-posted from Other News
During a tour of Israel and Palestine last week, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez did something that most EU leaders dare not: he criticised Israel for its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. At a press conference on Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Sánchez described the mass killing of civilians, “including women and children,” as “unacceptable.” He also raised the possibility of Spain unilaterally recognising Palestine as a state if Spain’s EU partners do not commit to collective recognition.
“The time has come for the international community and especially the EU to make a decision on the recognition of the Palestinian State. It would be worth it and it would be important for us to do it together,” Sánchez said, adding that if that does not happen, Spain will make its own decision on the matter. As Euro News notes, while a number of EU Members do recognise Palestinean statehood, they do not include any of the larger states or economies, meaning that Spain could become a pioneer if Sánchez were to deliver on his word.
Of course, Sánchez’s talk of the need for the “international community” to recognise Palestine as a state is absurd given that 138 of the world’s 193 countries — representing over three-quarters of the global population — had already done so as of December 31, 2019. The map below illustrates just how out of sync the international community of which Sánchez speaks — i.e. NATO & friends — is with the rest of the world on this issue.
By the end of 2019, nine G20 countries had recognised Palestine : Brazil, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Argentina (all current or prospective BRICS members, though Argentina may leave before it joins), Turkey and Indonesia. Ten G20 countries hadn’t, six of them NATO members (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and three, major non-NATO allies (Australia, South Korea and Japan). The other, Mexico, this year reclassified the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic mission in Mexico City from special delegation to embassy, despite huge pressure from the US State Department.
One more big caveat before we continue: a two-state solution may well be unworkable by this point anyway, as Yves argued in her preamble to yesterday’s cross-post, A Ceasefire Is Far from Lasting Peace – A National Security Expert on the Israel-Hamas Deal:
John Mearsheimer has stated a two-state solution is impossible and everyone advocating it ought to know that….which would seem to suggest their motives for touting it are cynical. One insurmountable obstacle is that a Palestinian state would have its own military, something Israel would never tolerate. A second issue is the way Israel has balkanize the area between Gaza and the West Bank, making any integration or even, say, land bridge very hard to implement. Third is what to do with the settlers They ought to be expelled, again something Israel would never accept.
Yet More “Terrorism Supporters”
Sánchez also said in his speech that while the temporary ceasefire declared last Friday may be a step in the right direction, something more permanent is needed. He also called on Israel to comply with its obligations under international law.
These comments may seem like weak tea given the sheer scale of destruction and death the Israeli Defence Forces have visited upon Gaza over the past seven weeks, but they still represent one of the strongest critiques of Israel’s actions by an EU leader to date. What’s more, Sánchez currently holds the rotating six-month presidency of the European Council, which he will soon be handing over to Belgian Premier (and, incidentally, alum of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program) Alexander De Croo.
De Croo accompanied Sánchez on his tour of Israel, Palestine and Egypt. During his address at Rafah, De Croo called for an immediate end to civilian casualties in Gaza and described the ongoing destruction of the enclave as “unacceptable.”
The Israeli government responded in time-honoured fashion by accusing the two European prime ministers of supporting terrorism. Tel Aviv’s rapidly growing list of “terrorist” leaders includes the presidents of Colombia, Chile, Honduras, Bolivia, Turkey, Ireland and now Spain and Belgium, to name a few.
“We condemn the false statements made by the leaders of Spain and Belgium, who support terrorism,” said Israel’s Foreign Minister Cohen. “Israel is acting in accordance with international law and is fighting a murderous terrorist organisation worse than ISIS that is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The diplomatic crisis continues to grow. On Saturday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassadors of Spain and Belgium for a stern reprimand over the statements made by their respective prime ministers. Shortly afterwards, the head of Spanish diplomacy, José Manuel Albares, responded in kind by summoning “the Israeli ambassador in Madrid to give explanations for the unacceptable and false accusations” emanating from Tel Aviv. Netanyahu himself gave Sánchez and De Croo a dark warning:
“What is a democracy supposed to do about this? If we accept and do not enter [Gaza] because civilians will die, we lose. You lose. Spain loses. Belgium loses. Because this is going to spread and you are going to see it very soon. Terrorism is not going to stop. If they win here, they intend to finish off the Middle East and then they will go to Europe. I am not exaggerating… Thousands and thousands and thousands of bombs falling on Barcelona, Madrid, Brussels, Antwerp or any other European city.”
Broad Support for Two-State Solution
Sánchez was reappointed for a second four-year term little more than two weeks ago, and only after making significant concessions to Catalonia’s pro-independence parties, which has sparked significant complaints and protests among many segments of society and key pillars of the establishment, including the judiciary and the Guardia Civil. But his proposal to recognise Palestinian statehood enjoys broad albeit not quite universal support among his coalition partners.
One obvious outlier is the Catalan pro-independence party Junts per Catalunya, whose leader in exile, Carles Puigdemont, has previously drawn parallels between Catalonia and Israel, describing them as “two nations [that have been] persecuted for protecting their language and fighting against empires that seek to neutralise them.”
But most of his other coalition partners would like nothing better than for Spain to recognise Palestine as a state. Speaking in Brussels on Friday, Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz, of the left-wing Sumar party, reminded Sánchez that recognition of Palestine was a key commitment in recent negotiations to form a new government:
“It has been a firm commitment in the government agreement. It is a matter of justice to do it now. We must move from words to actions.”
Spain has long had close close ties with Palestine and the broader Arab world. In 1979, Spanish Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez was the first Western European leader to host a visit from PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. In 1991, Madrid was chosen as the venue for the Madrid Conference that would open the peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis. In 2014, the Spanish parliament approved a non-binding motion calling on the then-Rajoy government to recognise the State of Palestine with 319 votes in favour and 2 against. That did not happen.
The motion was supported by all political parties. Today, that is not the case. Both the People’s Party (PP) and the far-right grouping Vox have blasted Sánchez for taking a unilateral position on the conflict without consulting parliament, much as he did last year when he announced his support for Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, to become an autonomous region within Morocco. The President of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has even suggested that the European Union is also not comfortable with Sánchez’s position while highlighting Hamas’ enthusiastic response to Sanchez’ speech.
The left-of-centre Podemos party, now a much-diminished force in parliament, has been the strongest critic of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. On Friday, the party’s general secretary, Ione Belarra, who was recently relieved of her duties as minister of social rights and Agenda 2030, welcomed the fact that the government had summoned the Israeli ambassador. But she called on Sánchez to go “one definitive step” further by breaking off relations with Israel until a lasting ceasefire is established. She has also called for economic sanctions against Netanyahu and his political cronies, “as the EU did with Putin”, an immediate arms embargo, and a boycott of all companies that collaborate with Israel, such as French supermarket group Carrefour.
A Historic Move?
If the Sánchez government were to actually deliver on his word (which is, I believe, still a big “IF”), it would be a historic move. Spain would become only the second country to recognise Palestine while being an EU Member State, after Sweden was the first to do so in 2014. In total, just nine of the EU’s 27 member states currently recognise the State of Palestine. Malta and Cyprus did so before joining the EU, as did the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria during the late 1980s, when they were still part of the Warsaw Pact.
Sanchez’ threat to unilaterally recognise Palestine comes as the EU is inflicting ever-increasing damage on its already tattered reputation in the rest of the world, as a result of its (until now) unfettered support for Israel. As even the BBC’s Diplomatic Editor James Lansdale recently noted, many governments are accusing the US, the UK and the EU of double standards:
You preach international law and yet you ignore the criticisms that are made against Israel. You are saying civilians need to be defended in Ukraine, but they seem to be less well defended in Gaza. Those arguments are being made against the West now, and I think the West now is beginning to feel that.
The move by Sánchez also comes as divisions within the EU are on the rise over Israel-Palestine. In recent weeks, EU Member States have largely split into two camps, with Spain, France and Portugal backing a ceasefire in Gaza, while Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary say that such a step would contravene Israel’s apparently unlimited right to defend itself. As we reported a few weeks ago, in Are the Walls Finally Closing in On Ursula von der Leyen?, the European Commission President’s support for Israel’s military onslaught against Gaza was so unbridled that it elicited a barrage of internal criticism.
A letter signed by 842 staff members of EU institutions accused VdL of giving “a free hand to the acceleration and the legitimacy of a war crime in the Gaza Strip” while also warning that the EU is “losing all credibility” as well as its status “as a fair, equitable and humanist broker.” That loss of credibility was on full display in a recent Al Jazeera interview of the EU’s chief diplomat-cum-head gardener, Josep Borrell:
Until now, France’s Macron government has been all over the place on the Israel-Hamas conflict, with one French diplomat recently summarising the French position as “one day pro-Israeli” and “the next [day] pro-Palestinian.” Germany’s Scholz government’s position has not changed one inch: Israel must be allowed “to protect and defend itself” following the “terrible, brutal attack that Hamas carried out,” even if that means annihilating Gaza. But Sánchez and De Croo’s statements from Rafah suggest that opinion may finally be solidifying against Israel’s “Gazacide” in certain EU capitals.
Relations between those countries and Israel soured further after Israel pulled out of an EU-Med summit in Barcelona on Monday that was meant to discuss the fallout of the Israel-Gaza war and its consequences for the region. EU-Med summits are held periodically to bring together foreign ministers from the EU as well as Middle Eastern and North African states to discuss issues of common interest.
It remains to be seen whether Sánchez’s government will deliver on its pledge to unilaterally recognise Palestine if the EU fails to do so collectively. An expose published this past weekend by El Salto suggests its motives may be more cynical. The article reveals that on Friday November 24, the very same day Sánchez gave his barnstorming speech in Rafah, Spain’s Ministry of Defence finalised a contract for 1,680 Spike LR2 missiles — the very same missiles “being used by elite units in the extermination campaign initiated by the IDF” — from Pap Tecnos, a Spanish subsidiary of Israeli arms manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
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