Eduardo González
Israel’s ambassador to Spain, Rodica Radian-Gordon, was summoned yesterday to the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to give explanations for the statements made by the head of her country’s diplomacy, Eli Cohen, in which he accused the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, of “supporting terrorism” and to receive the Spanish Government’s protest for these “unacceptable and completely false” accusations, according to Foreign Affairs sources told The Diplomat.
The same Foreign Ministry sources did not provide further details about the meeting, nor did sources from the Israeli Embassy also contacted by The Diplomat. The ambassador was received by the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Ángeles Moreno Bau.
In any case, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, expressed yesterday in Barcelona, on the occasion of the eighth Regional Forum of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), his hope that the ambassador would offer “clear” explanations about these accusations and “guarantees” that “they will not happen again in the future”. The UfM Regional Forum was boycotted by Israel in protest at the decision of its organizers to change the agenda to deal almost exclusively with the current crisis in the Middle East.
Last Friday, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen, summoned Spain’s ambassador to Tel Aviv, Ana Salomon, and accused Sanchez of “supporting terrorism” for stating, during his recent tour of Israel, Palestine and Egypt, that Israel’s response to the Hamas attack of October 7 is being “disproportionate” and that Spain advocates “a lasting ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip. For his part, his Spanish counterpart, José Manuel Albares, did the same with the Israeli ambassador in Madrid and described Cohen’s accusations as “totally false and unacceptable”.
Hamas
During the press conference he gave yesterday with his Palestinian counterpart, Riad al Maliki, in the margins of the Forum, Albares did not want to comment on the recent communiqué of the “terrorist organization” Hamas, in which he thanked Pedro Sanchez for his “clear and bold” position towards Israel. During the opening of the Forum, the Minister affirmed before the participants that the Palestinian National Authority is the “only possible partner for peace” because “Hamas does not have a peace agenda and is not a partner for peace in the Middle East, it cannot be part of the peace equation”.
He also condemned the “indiscriminate killing” of Israelis by Hamas, “which only knows how to destroy”, and recalled that among the more than 1,200 people killed by “this terrorist barbarity”, in reference to the Hamas attack of October 7 in Israel, there are two Spaniards, Ivan Illarramendi and Maya Villalobo, who “will always be in our memory”.
“Do not waste any more time for the establishment of the Palestinian state”
In his same intervention, Albares urged the UfM states to unite their “voices to urge everyone, the international community, not to waste any more time for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel which, with the support and guarantee of the entire international community, will contribute decisively to guaranteeing peace and security in the entire region.” He also called for “the effective return” of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza to replace Hamas, for which international support is necessary through “the materialization, once and for all, of the two-state solution.” “The UfM cannot remain oblivious to the tragedy being experienced in Gaza and in the Middle East,” he said. “Our diplomacy must speak today to silence the guns, a message of hope and a clear message of peace must come out of Barcelona,” he added.
In addition, at the press conference that closed the UfM Forum, Albares affirmed that, “now more than ever, Spain feels that no effort should be spared to reach a definitive solution” in the Middle East. “Spain has been very aware of the new opportunity we have to seek that definitive solution” and for that reason has proposed the holding of an international peace conference that already has the backing of the EU, the Arab League and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and that “will be the best framework to materialize a Palestinian State and a State of Israel that coexist and coexist peacefully and guarantee the other security and stability.” The conference “concerns everyone and no one should feel excluded” from it, he warned, referring to Israel.
At the same final press conference, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, defended the need to “perpetuate” the truce between Israel and Hamas, which ended yesterday, and listed three more keys to progress towards a solution: to avoid the “recolonization” of Gaza by Israel, to reject the illegal colonization of the West Bank, and to allow the Palestinian Authority to return to the Strip.
For his part, the secretary general of the UfM, Nasser Kamel, stated that “without a doubt, October 7 (the day of the Hamas attacks) marks a before and after for Mediterranean cooperation and for the Union for the Mediterranean: Israel and Palestine are founding members of our organization, which makes us reflect on the role of the UfM in forging a lasting peace between these two independent states, promoting concrete projects and initiatives that can help to consolidate this peace”.
