The Diplomat
The Palestinian Authority has appointed Husni Abdel Wahed as the new head of its Mission in Spain, who is awaiting authorisation from the Spanish government, The Objective reported yesterday.
Husni Abdel Wahed will fill the vacancy left by Musa Odeh, who left the post in July last year, after fifteen years as Palestinian representative in our country.
Wahed was ambassador in Buenos Aires, where he arrived in 2015, five years after Argentina recognised the Palestinian state. He was born 61 years ago in a refugee camp in Jericho. He holds a diploma in Social Sciences from the Academy of Gornabania (Bulgaria) and a degree in Journalism from the University of Havana.
In addition to working for Balsam magazine in his home country, he has been rector of the Arab College in Santiago de Chile and has advised the Education Department of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). His diplomatic career began as assistant to the Palestinian deputy foreign minister. After a number of posts in that department, he was sent to Venezuela as a counsellor to the embassy. He has also advised the Palestinian minister for the Americas.
Although Spain has not yet recognised the Palestinian state, in 2010 it decided to upgrade the status of the then General Delegation of Palestine in Madrid to ‘Mission’ and to grant ambassadorial status to its highest representative.
Pedro Sánchez’s government has not taken the step of recognising the Palestinian state, despite the fact that, in its programme for the April 2019 general elections, it included a commitment to ‘promote’ such recognition by EU member states, a reference that was omitted from the programme for the November 2019 elections.
Within the coalition Executive, UN Podemos is firmly in favour of recognition, but Sánchez’s entourage does not yet consider that the time has come to take a step that has already been taken by other EU countries, such as Sweden, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Romania, Cyprus and Malta.
