The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, assured yesterday in Brussels that the Council of Ministers will approve the recognition of the Palestinian State before July and that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will subsequently inform the Congress of this.
The recognition will be “a decision of the Council of Ministers, which is the one who makes the decisions regarding Spain’s foreign policy,” Albares declared in Brussels at the end of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers. Once that step is taken, he continued, the head of the Executive will explain “that decision in Congress.”
Albares also assured that he remains in “permanent contact with the European and Arab partners”, who have expressed their “gratitude for the strong position that Spain has”, and highlighted the “leadership position” that Spain is having in this matter, according to the Europa Press agency.
Pedro Sánchez announced this Wednesday in Qatar, on the second day of his tour of the Middle East (which included Jordan and Saudi Arabia), that Spain will support “the entry of Palestine as a full member of the United Nations.” Likewise, he demanded the recognition of the State of Israel by its Arab “neighbors,” because “mutual recognition is the key to achieving a lasting solution to this conflict.”
During the flight to Jordan, the President of the Government told the journalists covering the tour that his intention is to be able to recognize the Palestinian State before the summer. “We must be attentive to the decisions that will be taken soon in Brussels and New York,” he added.
Brawl between Aznar and Sánchez
For his part, the former president of the Government José María Aznar yesterday showed his rejection of the recognition of the Palestinian State. “To those who refer to the creation of a Palestinian State, what do they mean by a Palestinian State? That does not exist. That is absurd,” he declared during a FAES Foundation event dedicated to “Iran and its relationship with the crisis in the Middle East.”
After these statements, Pedro Sánchez responded to Aznar through the X account, in which he limited himself to saying that the Palestinian State “exists and will exist.” It so happens that the electoral program of the PP (Aznar’s party) in the general elections of July 23 committed to “working for the resolution of conflicts, especially the Israeli-Palestinian one, through the solution of two State”.
For now, 120 UN member states (mainly Arab and non-aligned) committed yesterday, in a joint letter, to supporting Palestine’s entry as a full member of the United Nations. Currently, 140 of the 193 UN countries already recognize the State of Palestine. The current president of the Security Council, Maltese Vanessa Frazier, received this Wednesday a letter from the diplomatic mission of Palestine in which she requests full admission to the UN. The Security Council will address this issue on April 18 in New York and, according to the Efe agency, the presence of Albares has not been ruled out, despite the fact that Spain is not a member of this body.
