Eduardo González
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, begins today a new visit to Jordan on the occasion of the International Conference on Gaza, co-organized by the Jordanian and Egyptian Governments and by the United Nations.
The ‘Call to Action: Urgent Humanitarian Response for Gaza’ conference has been convened by King Abdullah II of Jordan, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, and will meet tomorrow,11 June, to heads of state and government and leaders of humanitarian organizations (including the secretary general of the Union for the Mediterranean, Nasser Kamel) and international aid, according to a statement from the Jordanian Royal Family. The meeting, which will be held at the King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Center in the Dead Sea, aims to strengthen and coordinate the international community’s response to the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.
The Government of Jordan, especially Abdullah II, is especially involved in the search for a solution to the Middle East conflict. Furthermore, Jordan is one of the promoters of launching humanitarian aid packages to the Gaza Strip by air in order to circumvent the blockade maintained by Israel by land.
The trip of Pedro Sánchez – who will travel accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares – will take place two weeks after the Government of Pedro Sánchez publicly announced the recognition of the State of Palestine, which took place on May 28, and a few days after Spain announced its intention to join the procedure of the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) opened by South Africa to end the military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Pedro Sánchez traveled to Jordan on April 1 – on his second tour of the Middle East since the outbreak of the conflict and the first visit by a President of the Spanish Government to this country in fifteen years – to defend a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. , promote the two-state solution and the recognition of the Palestinian State and gather support for the peace conference proposed by Spain.
On that trip, Chief Executive Sánchez and the Hashemite Monarch exchanged views on the materialization of the two-state solution and on the need to avoid escalation and ensure stability in the region. Pedro Sánchez also took advantage of his presence in Jordan to visit the Jabal Al Hussein refugee camp, managed by the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA), where he reiterated Spain’s support for this organization.
In the first week of December, Pedro Sánchez and Abdullah II held a telephone conversation in which they renewed their call for “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza”, warned of the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Strip and stressed the need to guarantee uninterrupted delivery of aid. A week later, the Hashemite Monarch traveled to Madrid, where he was received by King Felipe VI and Pedro Sánchez, to whom he thanked “Spain’s position” in favor of a ceasefire and the two-state solution to end the conflict. Albares also traveled to Jordan on March 13, where he was received by Abdullah II and visited a UNRWA refugee camp with his Jordanian counterpart, Aymán Safadi.
