As he wrapped up his latest tour of the Middle East in Doha on Thursday, Spain’s Pedro Sanchez had a message for his Israeli counterpart, delivered on Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based channel Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to take off the airwaves.
Spain’s Socialist leader said the European Union should review its strategic relationship with Israel if it determines that Israel has breached humanitarian law in Gaza. He expressed his “doubts” that Israel was in compliance with its international obligations.
Sanchez said his country had stopped selling weapons to Israel, and urged other nations to do the same. Highlighting Netanyahu’s “increasing isolation”, he pointed to a broad shift in the West towards greater criticism of Israel's Gaza offensive, which was triggered by the October 7 Hamas-led massacres in southern Israel.
The Spanish leader reiterated his call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for the international recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state with full membership in the United Nations, confirming Madrid would go ahead with plans to recognise Palistinian statehood.
While he did not give a timetable, his foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, previously said Madrid would recognise the State of Palestine before July.
“We need a real Palestinian state,” Albares told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday. “The Palestinian people must not be condemned to forever be refugees.”
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Spain has emerged as one of the most forceful EU critics of Israel’s ferocious riposte, which has ravaged most of the Palestinian enclave and killed or maimed tens of thousands of its inhabitants.
In the weeks following Hamas’s murderous October 7 rampage, as most Western countries including France offered unqualified support to Israel and its right to defend itself, Spain stood out in its insistence on a comprehensive solution to the decades-old Mideast conflict.
On a visit to Israel in November 23, Sanchez repeated his condemnation of the “terrible terrorist acts of Hamas”, saying he understood Israel’s “frustration and pain”. But he also told his Israeli counterpart that Israel must respect international law and end the “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip.
