SPAIN TO RECOGNISE PALESTINIAN STATE
April 3, 2024Spain is SET to recognise Palestinian statehood by July, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told journalists during a Middle East tour.
Sanchez stated that he believed there would soon be a “”critical mass”” within the European Union to push several member states to adopt the same position. Despite Spain not being the first to recognise Palestinian statehood within the EU, they have been a vocal critic of Israel and defender of Palestinian rights amidst Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
At a European Council meeting on March 22, Sanchez said he had agreed with the leaders of Ireland, Malta and Slovenia to “”take the first steps”” towards recognising statehood declared by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In response, Israel told the four countries that their plan constituted a “”prize for terrorism”” that would reduce the chances of a negotiated resolution to the Gaza conflict.
This move comes as Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority’s envoy to the UN, has applied for formal status at the United Nations.
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English Script:
DW News Host: And Spain has called on Israel to clarify the details surrounding the death of the seven aid workers. This comes as reports emerge in Spanish media that Spain will recognize Palestinian statehood by July. Here’s Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on a trip to Jordan.
Pedro Sanchez: They died doing what this NGO has been devoted to for years, to deliver food in devastated areas.
DW News Host: Now Pedro Sanchez has also said that he wants Spain to recognize Palestinian statehood this year. What exactly would that mean?
Jack Parrock: Yeah, that’s right. Ahead of his visit to the Middle East, he gave an informal discussion to the Spanish press, but it’s widely reported by most of the big Spanish newspapers and agencies and broadcasters that he said to them that he would expect that Spain would recognize the state of Palestine by July at the latest. There is a pressure, social pressure, political pressure within Spain for the Spanish government to do that. It would also be in the run up to the European Parliament elections, which are coming in June, at which Pedro Sanchez will hope to do well and will see this as something of a campaign issue. It’s interesting, this one, because as a European Union country, the E.U. broadly supports the two-state solution between Israel and the state of Palestine. But it doesn’t have a position for each of the 27 EU countries to recognize the state of Palestine unilaterally. So different countries are taking different positions on this.
DW News Host: Do you think different EU countries could individually follow suit in recognizing the Palestinian state?
Jack Parrock: I think so. There’s a big discussion about this. Some of them already do. Some countries like Bulgaria and Czechia and Cyprus and Hungary, Poland, they actually recognized the state of Palestine before they joined the European Union. Sweden has done so since, but there are many countries that are starting to consider it. We know that Belgium is considering it. Ireland and Malta and Slovenia. Spain probably being the loudest country in the official recognition and starting diplomatic relations with a state of Palestine. But the big question is, and the big diplomatic and economic power obviously comes from Germany, which is unlikely to do so unless there was clear sort of acceptance for that by the Israelis. And at the moment, it doesn’t look like Germany would do so. France potentially as well could. But at the moment, like we say, some of those countries, and I think what we will see is Spain and those other countries I mentioned push ahead to try and recognize the states of Palestine, a state of Palestine by the summer.
DW News Host: Jack, thank you very much. That is DWP correspondent Jack Parrock.
