Israel’s response to what its Foreign Minister Israel Katz sees as “a reward for terrorism”, namely the announcement that Spain will recognize the Palestinian state on Tuesday, was not long in coming.
In a harsh message in Hebrew, English and Spanish, Katz announced on Samaria”, that is, the territory that the rest of the world calls the West Bank.
What particularly infuriated Katz, in addition to Pedro Sánchez’s announcement that on Tuesday the Council of Ministers will take the step towards recognition that he has been promising for some time and which he has coordinated with Norway and Ireland, was a message from the vice-president of the government, Yolanda Díaz, leader of Sumar. In the approximately two-minute message, Díaz, with a set and somewhat artificial tone, celebrated the government’s decision, claiming Palestinian recognition as a “matter of human rights and international legality” and as an “act of humanity”. You speak of “genocide” and of pressuring the EU to “review the sale of arms” and obtain a ceasefire, to conclude with “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea”.
This last sentence is the one that got on the nerves of Katz and Netanyahu’s government, which interprets it as anti-Semitic because between the river and the sea, in addition to the West Bank and Gaza, there is also Israel. The phrase has been used for years by Palestinian nationalists as a slogan for Palestinian liberation, and for equal rights between Palestinians and Israelis, but not necessarily as a call for the destruction of the state of Israel, as Tel Aviv and the Israeli ambassador interpret it in Madrid, Rodica Radian-Gordon.
Katz calls Díaz “this ignorant and hateful person” and invites her “if she wants to understand what radical Islam really wants” to “learn about the 700 years of Islamic rule in Al Andalús, present-day Spain.”
The Spanish consulate in Jerusalem is currently a sort of de facto embassy for the Palestinians because, in addition to offering them consular services, it is responsible for maintaining diplomatic relations with the Palestinian National Authority and coordinating Spanish cooperation projects in the occupied territories. But the one who exercises jurisdiction over the territory is Israel after the 1967 occupation, and it is the ministry led by Katz that is responsible for granting visas to Spanish diplomatic personnel.
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has already made it known that, if the decision announced on social networks comes to fruition, Madrid will formally protest the decision to the Israeli government. Furthermore, Albares has vehemently denied that there are anti-Semites among members of the Spanish government. He said that it is instead “a tolerant, plural and diverse government, which does not accept any hate speech, including anti-Semitism”.
In the aftermath of the announcement by the heads of government of Spain, Norway and Ireland, Israel had angrily summoned their diplomatic representatives to express to them the reprimand of the Israeli executive and force them to watch a video in which they could see how Hamas militiamen were the Last October 7, they kidnapped and mistreated several female soldiers from a base in Nahal Oz, near the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the protests organized on Spanish campuses are starting to bear fruit: some universities, including those of Barcelona, Granada, Sevilla, and Oviedo, announce that, as the students requested, they have stopped any collaboration with Israeli universities.
