The Diplomat
The Israeli Government has decided not to attend the 8th Regional Forum of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), which will be held on Monday in Barcelona and will focus on the war in Gaza and the Middle East crisis, sources at the Israeli Embassy in Madrid confirmed to The Diplomat.
Israel will not send any member of its government, nor will it be represented by its ambassador to Spain, Rodica Radian-Gordon, despite the fact that she is scheduled to be in Barcelona on other matters that day.
The decision of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is motivated by the change in the original agenda of the meeting, according to a note issued by the Israeli Embassy in Brussels.
In its note, the Embassy recalls that “the Union for the Mediterranean is a practical platform to promote cooperation between different countries for the benefit of all the peoples of the Mediterranean”.
It adds that “the decision to change the original agenda and focus solely on the current conflict was taken without consulting Israel”. “This undermines the purpose of the UfM and risks transforming it into another international forum for Arab states to attack Israel. Therefore, Israel does not intend to participate in the meeting.”
The announcement comes amid a tour of the region by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, as head of the government of the country holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU for this six-month period, accompanied by his Belgian counterpart, Alexander de Croo, whose country will succeed Spain on 1 January.
The meeting was initially planned to address the organisation’s efforts on its fifteenth anniversary and its reform, but the foreign ministers of the Euro-Mediterranean region “will focus their discussions on the critical situation in Israel, Gaza-Palestine and the consequences in the region,” according to the UfM in a press release. “The Forum will provide an opportunity to analyse the dramatic situation in the area and to reflect on the way forward to reach a solution,” it added.
Spain agreed with this change and intends to defend at the meeting its proposal to hold an international peace conference to materialise the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, something Pedro Sánchez is insisting on during his tour.
