The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will receive on Thursday morning, as The Diplomat reported, the first visit in the last thirteen years from the head of Israeli diplomacy – Eli Cohen – but hours earlier, on Wednesday afternoon, he will do the same with the head of foreign relations for the Palestinian Authority, Riad al-Malki.
Palestinian foreign ministers travel much more frequently to Spain than Israeli foreign ministers, and in fact al-Malki was in Madrid in July last year. Now he will almost coincide in the Spanish capital with Eli Cohen, who took office in December, and who, however, already had the opportunity to talk to Albares in January, during the Davos Forum.
The two visits will take place at a time when the tension in the region seemed to have subsided over Easter -although yesterday there was a new attack in Jerusalem that left six people wounded-, and when Spain is preparing to take over the six-month presidency of the European Union on 1 July. Hence, both Al Malki and Cohen want to hear from Albares whether Spain has any plans to get the EU-27 more involved in the search for a solution to the conflict.
Pedro Sánchez’s government does not seem to have the Middle East issue at the top of its priorities for the presidency, given that the United States is not playing as active a role as in the past. And, in any case, in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the government insists on a two-state solution as the only possible response to the aspirations of both sides.
