Although he has been granted the position for months, the new Israeli ambassador to Spain, the diplomat Zvi Vapni, has not yet taken up his position and no one knows when he will do so. The head of the Israeli Embassy in Madrid has been vacant since, last May, the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu called his predecessor, Rodica Radian-Gordon, for consultations, in protest at the recognition of the Palestinian State by Spain, which it described as “a reward for the Hamas murderers” and illustrated with a video in which he mixed images of a flamenco dance parody with real ones from the terrorist attacks of October 7. The disqualifications and harsh words show the irritation of the Israeli authorities at the Spanish Government’s criticism of its indiscriminate bombings on Gaza and the deterioration of a bilateral relationship that is going through its worst moment since Spain recognized Israel in 1986.
It is not the first time that Israel has withdrawn its highest diplomatic representative in Spain. She already did it on November 30, although now her absence lasts five months and then the ambassador returned after just over a month. What bothered Netanyahu on that occasion was that President Pedro Sánchez expressed “frank doubts” that the Israeli army was respecting international law in its offensive on the Strip. He did so during his visit to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, accompanied by the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, and he reiterated it upon his return to Spain. Those words seem restrained today, but then almost no one questioned the proportionality of Israel’s response to the crimes perpetrated by Hamas weeks before.
From the beginning, European diplomatic sources point out, Netanyahu posed the dilemma: “Either you are with me or against me.” And he accused those who dared to criticize his strategy of aligning themselves with his enemies. However, as the magnitude of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the Israeli bombings became known, members of the Spanish Government raised the tone of their complaints. And not only the ministers of the minority partner, first Podemos and then Sumar.
The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, even spoke of “genocide”, a word that her Foreign Affairs colleague, José Manuel Albares, carefully avoided. But, beyond the words, what has bothered Israel have been, above all, the facts: in June, Spain announced its appearance in the case opened in the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body of the UN, after the complaint of genocide in Gaza presented by South Africa.
While other governments hesitated or were paralyzed by the weight of their history, such as the German one, the Spanish one became the leader of the Palestinian cause in the EU. Sánchez made several tours of European capitals to try to form a group of countries willing to take the step of recognizing the Palestinian State together. The domino effect did not occur, at least not to the extent expected. Ultimately, only three joined: Ireland, Norway and Slovenia. But this trickle brings the number of countries that recognize it to almost three quarters of the UN members (144 out of 193).
This leadership made Spain gain popularity in the Arab world, while Israel included it in its particular blacklist. The Minister of the Diaspora, Amichai Chikli, who went to Madrid last May to participate in a Vox pre-election rally – the same one where the Argentine president, Javier Milei, called Sánchez’s wife “corrupt” – held the president responsible. Spanish to prolong the suffering of the Gazan population by giving wings to Hamas.
The Spanish Government, together with the Irish Government, proposed the suspension of the association agreement between the EU and Israel due to the violation of human rights in Gaza, but the request was put on hold pending a meeting of the Twenty-Seven with the Israeli Foreign Minister. , Israel Katz, which is still undated. The commitment to hold an international peace conference on the basis of the coexistence of two States, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, living together in peace and security, was revived by Spanish diplomacy and obtained the support of the EU, the Arab League and the Islamic Conference, but it fell on deaf ears in the face of Israeli disdain and the weakness of US President Joe Biden in the final stretch of his mandate.
Albares assured that no new authorizations had been granted for the export of military material to Israel since October 7, although several NGOs reported that those previously granted had not been suspended. It was, in any case, a unilateral measure, given the inability of the EU to decree an embargo. The mere suggestion that arms supplies to Israel be cut off, raised by French President Emmanuel Macron last Saturday, provoked an angry reaction from Netanyahu.
The leading role assumed by the Spanish Government in the defense of the Palestinian people – Spain was one of the first countries to ask for a “permanent ceasefire” to facilitate aid to the population of the Strip, when the majority of its Western partners only spoke of “humanitarian pauses”—has opened a chasm of mistrust between both countries.
The latest episode of this disagreement was the celebration last week in Madrid of the annual conference of the Masar Badil movement, which advocates the destruction of the State of Israel and celebrates the “glorious” day of October 7 of last year, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 251 kidnapped. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has even accused Spain of having “become a paradise to sow hatred and incite the destruction of Israel”, words that are “out of place” for Albares. , who has urged the Israeli authorities to go to the Prosecutor’s Office if they believe that a hate crime has occurred.
In this climate of coldness and suspicion, diplomatic sources assume that Israel will once again leave its chair empty at the ministerial summit that the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM) will hold in Barcelona on the 28th, the only international forum beyond the UN in which Israel and the Arab countries sit together. For now they have not confirmed it.