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| Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Friday. (Kevin Wolf/AP) |
| On the ground, there is little sign of a viable Palestinian state. The territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem — the latter of which is imagined as the seat of a future Palestinian capital — remain under de facto Israeli military occupation, carved up by the security imperatives of the Israeli state and the segregated demands of an ever-expanding cohort of Jewish settlers. The territory of Gaza is a blighted, rubble-strewn war zone, the grave of more than 34,900 Palestinians killed by Israel’s ongoing offensive against militant group Hamas.
There’s no clarity over who will govern Gaza once the fighting stops or, for that matter, how such a destroyed place can be governed and rebuilt. The Palestinian national movement is in a splintered, feeble condition, and the beleaguered Palestinian Authority in its current form will struggle to hold a united front. Hamas may be battered, but it’s hardly vanquished and still fighting Israel in areas of Gaza where it was thought to have been neutralized. Across the mainstream factions in Israel, from the right-wing camp led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his more moderate opponents, there is no interest in even talk about Palestinian self-determination or statehood. That was broadly the case before Oct. 7, when Hamas orchestrated the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, and all the more true in its aftermath. Yet away from the Holy Land, the clamor for a Palestinian state is only getting louder. The United States and Israel’s Arab neighbors see the resurrection of the “two-state solution” as a key element in any postwar peace. And a growing cadre of nations are moving to affirm this scenario in principle, no matter that it doesn’t exist in practice. |
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| Demonstrators in Madrid on Saturday call for a cease-fire in Gaza during a rally to commemorate Nakba Day, (Isabel Infantes/Reuters) |
| One of those countries is Spain. The government in Madrid, alongside its counterparts in Ireland, Malta and Slovenia, is expected later this month to formally recognize Palestinian statehood, joining more than 140 other member states of the United Nations that already do. In an interview, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said the symbolic gesture, long telegraphed by Spain’s left-leaning government, was part of his country’s belief in the necessity of a two-state solution to settle the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and “put an end to the cycle of violence” in the region. Recognizing a Palestinian state, Albares told me, was “the best tool right now to protect the two-state solution” at a time when there seems little hope for it coming to fruition. Such a measure, along with other forms of diplomatic pressure on Israel such as the sanctions on certain settler entities in the West Bank pushed through by the Biden administration, could help nudge against an untenable status quo, he argued. Albares said that Spain’s decision to formally recognize a Palestinian state would help “steer the conversation” in Europe. We spoke Friday in Washington, which Albares visited for a one-day trip where he met Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Spain’s top diplomat downplayed the points of divergence with the United States, stressing their shared desire to bring “definitive peace” to the region and praising Blinken’s relentless shuttle diplomacy to the Middle East. But that very day, Spain voted in favor of a U.N. General Assembly resolution that urged new “rights and privileges” to a Palestinian state and called on the Security Council to reconsider Palestinians’ request to become the 194th member of the United Nations. The United States was among a tiny contingent of nine countries to vote against it. The U.S. view is that full Palestinian membership to the United Nations should not precede successful talks with Israel, but come after. “We have said from the beginning the best way to ensure Palestinian full membership in the U.N. is to do that through negotiations with Israel,” Robert Wood, deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Thursday. “That remains our position.” But Albares argued the opposite. Given the prevailing forces mitigating against a Palestinian state, international recognition in forums such as the United Nations is one of the few ways to strengthen the cause of Palestinian statehood and back pragmatists within the Palestinian national movement who could help broker peace. “Soon, if we don’t act, it will be completely impossible,” he said. “It will be something for the books of history.”
The Spanish government has been outspoken about the perceived excesses of Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for a cease-fire in November and has warned that Netanyahu’s current approach risks Israel’s isolation on the world stage. Albares condemned the apparent move on Rafah, the southern Gaza city that’s home to more than a million Palestinians, many displaced by the war. “There is already a humanitarian catastrophe going on in Gaza, but this will get out of proportion,” he told me. Spain also was among the first Western nations to push against funding cuts to UNRWA, the U.N. agency for the Palestinians, and last month conferred upon the agency and its director the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic, the highest honor in Spain. Pro-Palestinian protests in Spanish universities have not been met with the same suppressive measures seen elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. “Palestine is one of the few issues in which Spain can make progressive foreign policy,” Ignacio Molina, an expert at the Royal Elcano Institute, a Madrid think tank, told Voice of America. “It gives Spain a leadership role in the EU. Spain has a peculiar position internationally with links between the Arab [world] and Latin America which gives it a certain moral authority on this issue.” Albares concurred, saying the conflict resonated for his nation more “maybe because we are a Mediterranean country, because we know the Arab world well, that it’s a part of our history.” But he added that his government’s view was grounded in an embrace of universal principles that extend well beyond the Middle East and also underscore their approach to supporting Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion — a belief in the protection of civilians, the defense of international law and the obligation to deliver humanitarian aid to those in need. “We uphold those things, both in Ukraine and in Gaza,” Albares told me. “When we say let’s stop this war, we want that in Ukraine and we want that in Gaza.” |