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MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

Israel to stop work of Spanish consulate for Palestinians

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Friday he had decided to "sever the connection" between Spain's diplomatic mission and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over Madrid's recognition of a Palestinian state.

Published: 24 May 2024 12:01 CEST
Israel to stop work of Spanish consulate for Palestinians
Plaque at the entrance of the Palestinian Embassy in Madrid. (Photo by Thomas COEX / AFP)

“I have decided to sever the connection between Spain’s representation in Israel and the Palestinians, and to prohibit the Spanish consulate in Jerusalem from providing services to Palestinians from the West Bank,” Katz said in a post on X.

It was not immediately clear how Israel would carry out the threat.

Asked by AFP about the practicalities and consequences of Katz’s announcement, the foreign ministry did not immediately comment.

Katz said his decision was made “in response to Spain’s recognition of a Palestinian state and the anti-Semitic call by Spain’s deputy prime minister to… ‘liberate Palestine from the river to the sea'”.

Spain, Ireland and Norway announced Wednesday their decision to recognise the State of Palestine later this month, drawing rebuke from Israel.

READ MORE: Why is Spain so pro-Palestine?

The Israeli government denounced the largely symbolic move as a “reward for terror” as the war in the Gaza Strip, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7th attack, nears an eighth month.

The foreign ministry on Thursday warned that Israel’s ties with Ireland, Norway and Spain would face “serious consequences”.

Katz in his Friday announcement criticised remarks on X by the Spanish government’s number three Yolanda Díaz, a far-left party leader and labour minister.

Welcoming the announcement of the formal recognition of a Palestinian state, Díaz had said: “We cannot stop here. Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.”

The pro-Palestinian rallying cry refers to historic Palestine’s borders under the British mandate, which extended from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea, before the creation of Israel in 1948.

Critics perceive it as a call for the elimination of Israel, including its ambassador to Spain who condemned the minister’s remarks.

The phrase “from the river to the sea” is sometimes also used as a Zionist slogan for a Greater Israel that would span over the same territory.

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POLITICS

First pardons granted under Spain’s amnesty for Catalan separatists

A politician and police officer on Tuesday became the first people to benefit from Spain's divisive amnesty law for Catalan separatists involved in a botched 2017 secession bid.

Published: 26 June 2024 07:58 CEST
First pardons granted under Spain's amnesty for Catalan separatists

The amnesty law – approved last month – is expected to affect around 400 people facing trial or already convicted over their roles in the wealthy northeastern region’s failed independence push, which triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez agreed to grant the amnesty in exchange for the key support of Catalan separatist parties in parliament to secure a new term in office following an inconclusive general election last July.

READ ALSO: Spain’s contested Catalan amnesty bill comes into force

The separatist parties have threatened to withdraw their support for Sánchez’s minority government unless the amnesty is applied.

Catalonia’s High Court said it had decided to “declare the extinction of criminal responsibility” for former Catalan regional interior minister Miquel Buch, as well as to Lluís Escolà, an officer in Catalonia’s regional police force, since the crimes they were convicted of “have been amnestied”.

Buch was sentenced last year to four and a half years in jail for embezzlement and misappropriation for hiring Escolà in 2018 and paying him out of public coffers to act as a bodyguard for the former head of the regional Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont, while he was in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

Escolà was handed a four-year prison sentence for working as Puigdemont’s bodyguard.

Puigdemont fled Spain to avoid arrest shortly after his government led Catalonia’s failed secession push, which involved an independence referendum that was banned by the courts followed by a short-lived declaration of independence.

Spain’s conservative opposition has staged massive street protests against the amnesty law, which judges must decide to apply on a case-by-case basis.

Puigdemont had said he hopes to return to Spain but there is still a warrant for his arrest and a Spanish court continues to investigate him for the alleged crimes of embezzlement and disobedience related to the secession bid.

He also remains under investigation for alleged terrorism over protests in 2019 against the jailing of several referendum leaders that sometimes turned violent.

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