Eduardo González/Juan David Latorre
The former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and former Spanish Foreign Minister, Josep Borrell, lamented this Tuesday in Madrid Europe’s inability to end the Middle East conflict, which he linked to “the high price the Palestinian people have had to pay because of Europe’s guilty conscience over the Holocaust.”
“One horror does not justify another horror, and the firm and clear condemnation that must always be repeated of Hamas’s terrorist attacks cannot justify the military response that Israel gave and, unfortunately, continues to give,” Borrell declared after receiving, at the Casa Árabe headquarters in Madrid, the Grand Star of the Order of Jerusalem from the Palestinian Ambassador to Spain, Husni Abdel Wahed, in the presence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares.
“The Palestinians have been the greatest victims of history,” he asserted. “We in the West invented the theory that a people without a land should be given a land without a people; that slogan is a falsification of reality, because that land did have a people,” he continued.
“This is the crux of the story: our guilty conscience over the Holocaust led us to seek a national home for the Jewish people, and we justified their settlement in Palestine by arguing that there was no people there,” he denounced. “What a distortion of history: of course there was a people, a people who were expelled at knifepoint,” he warned.
According to Borrell, “the creation of the State of Israel and its expansion beyond the borders granted to it by the United Nations corresponds to a colonial logic, the colonial logic that drove us Europeans to contribute to this construction at a time when France had a Ministry of Colonies and the United Kingdom had a Colonial Office.”
“This illegality must be denounced, and we must do more than just denounce it, because the discourse that ‘we condemn it, we are monitoring it closely, but since they are friends we cannot sanction them’ is a discourse that no longer withstands the law, logic, or the slightest sense of humanity,” Borrell continued.
“The Palestinian people have paid a high price for Europe’s guilty conscience,” the former EU foreign policy chief declared. “We Europeans are the world champions of mass murder, then we were the world champions of repentance, condemnation, and celebrating that tragedy and that it will never happen again,” and “today we are the world champions of looking the other way.” “We cannot cry ‘never again’ when today the same thing we perpetrated and later condemned is happening,” he warned.
In this context, Borrell praised “the commitment” shown by “the Government and the people of Spain.” “I saw the President of the Spanish Government (Pedro Sánchez) defending, almost single-handedly, with strong support from Ireland and a few others in the European Council, the need for European action to stop this tragedy,” he recalled. “He didn’t receive the response he deserved, but he was deeply committed, and little by little the idea has gained traction that only by recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to exist, their right to live on land that was theirs,” can the conflict be resolved, he added.
According to Borrell, “the problem is finding a solution” so that Palestinians and Israelis “can recognize each other, which is the only possible basis for peace,” and this implies going “beyond symbolic and diplomatic recognition by the Member States of the European Union.” “Knowing that today the government of (Benjamin) Netanyahu doesn’t want it, we will have to find a way to make them want it, and that means more than words; it means a commitment that will lead us to peace. The European Union has arrived late to this meeting, but it still has time to act,” he concluded.
Albares and the UN Resolution
For his part, José Manuel Albares highlighted the United Nations Security Council’s approval on Monday of a US-drafted resolution supporting President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza. This plan includes the establishment of a transitional government and the deployment of a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) “under a unified command” and with forces from participating member states in close consultation with Israel and Egypt.
“Yesterday, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution for that future of peace in Gaza, in Palestine, in the Middle East, but now we must continue working,” because “this is not the end of anything; it is the beginning of a long road,” he stated.
“We must work to ensure that Gaza and the West Bank are united as soon as possible, not to further divide them; so that Palestinians are at the forefront and lead the peace and reconstruction of their own country and their own people, not to further alienate them; so that Gaza and the West Bank are under a single authority, not to fragment Gaza under multiple authorities,” he continued.
“It is important to move forward with stabilization, a stabilization that puts the future of their destiny in the hands of the Palestinians themselves,” he warned. “We need security guarantees for this, yes, but these security guarantees must be the pillars of a just and lasting political solution,” he added. “The deployment of the Stabilization Force approved by the Security Council resolution yesterday may be a change, but it is not the only change. We will continue to advocate, in parallel, for the strengthening of European Union missions on the ground,” he announced.
Speaking to Radio Nacional de España this morning, Albares stated that the resolution is “good news, insofar as the Security Council and the United Nations are becoming involved in peace in the Middle East, for the Gazans, and in favor of the two-state solution.” The text was approved by thirteen votes in favor, with Russia and China abstaining, and has been praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because it establishes “the complete demilitarization, disarmament, and deradicalization” of the Palestinian territory.
Palestinian Ambassador
For his part, the Palestinian ambassador to Spain, Husni Abdel Wahed, asserted that with the decision by Pedro Sánchez’s government to recognize the State of Palestine, “Spain has demonstrated its great capacity for initiative, management, and leadership.” “Time has proven the leaders and people of Spain right, because others have followed Spain’s lead,” he concluded.