The heads of diplomacy of the 27 members of the European Union, 15 other Mediterranean countries and the European Commission will debate the situation in the Middle East on Monday in Barcelona, with the presence of the Palestinian Authority, but without Israel.
This is the eighth Regional Forum of the Union for the Mediterranean, a meeting of the countries that make up this intergovernmental organization at the level of Foreign Ministers, including the head of Portuguese diplomacy, João Gomes Cravinho.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority are part of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), but Tel Aviv canceled its presence in Barcelona on Friday.
The UfM revealed in a statement on Thursday that although the forum’s initial agenda focuses on the organization’s 15th anniversary “and ongoing reforms,” ministers will ultimately “debate the critical situation in Israel and Gaza-Palestine, as well as as the consequences in the region”.
“The forum is the opportunity for an exchange between all members on the dramatic situation on the ground and the way forward,” defended the UfM.
A few hours later, Israeli government sources told Spanish media that Israel will not attend the annual meeting of UfM ministers in Barcelona. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority confirmed that it will be present.
Israel regretted “the change in the original agenda” of the UfM forum, which was to be “a practical platform to promote cooperation between different countries for the benefit of all the peoples of the Mediterranean.”
The changes “damage the objective of the UfM and run the risk of transforming it into another international forum in which Arab countries criticize Israel,” said sources in Tel Aviv, cited by the Europa Press agency.
The boycott of Tel Aviv frustrates the Spanish Government’s objective of making the UfM and Monday’s meeting a platform for dialogue and rapprochement between Israel and Arab countries, including the Palestinian authorities.
On October 17, days after the start of the war in Gaza following the attack by the radical Islamist group Hamas on Israel, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, proposed to the European Council to make the UfM a platform for dialogue between several parties. , arguing that Israelis, Palestinians and other European and Arab countries have a seat in this forum on equal terms.
“Both Europeans and Arabs sit at the table. It is, in our opinion, a good opportunity that must be taken advantage of,” said Sánchez.
Israel’s decision not to be in Barcelona also coincided with Sánchez’s visit, together with his Belgian counterpart, Alexander de Croo, to the Middle East on Thursday and Friday, during which both stated that the Tel Aviv Government considered that Hamas It was “support for terrorism.”
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a statement from the Tel Aviv Government, “strongly condemned” the statements of Sánchez and Croo, considering that they do not attribute to Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, “all responsibility for the crimes against the humanity that committed.” perpetuated: massacring Israeli citizens and using Palestinians as human shields.
At a news conference Friday in Rafah, Egypt, on the border with Gaza, Sánchez and de Croo called for the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas, but repeatedly criticized Israel for its disregard for international law and the death of ” too many Palestinian civilians. , among them thousands of children, in the Israeli military operation in recent weeks in that territory.
“I firmly believe that we have to ask Israel to comply with its obligations under international law,” said Pedro Sánchez, who used expressions such as “indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians” in Gaza.
The Belgian Prime Minister, for his part, stated that he went to the region with Sánchez with a “message of solidarity and humanity”, stated that on the other side of the border where they were, in Palestinian territory, “too many civilians lost their lives” and They considered that “the destruction of Gaza is unacceptable.”
Both Sánchez and De Croo stressed that they condemn the Hamas attack on October 7 and that Israel has the legitimate right to defend itself within the framework of international law.
43 countries are part of the UfM: 27 from the EU and 17 other Mediterranean states from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, including Palestine, which are not officially recognized as a state by all the others.
The UfM Regional Forum, a meeting of Foreign Ministers (MNE), is held annually in Barcelona and is co-chaired by the head of EU diplomacy, the Spanish Josep Borrell, and the Jordanian minister Ayman Safadi.
The UfM was created in 2008 and is the heir to the Euro-Mediterranean Conference, founded in 2015 and known as the “Barcelona process”, with the aim of promoting cooperation in the Euro-Mediterranean region.
Source: TSF
