MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will meet several of his European Union counterparts over the next week to try to garner support for the recognition of a Palestinian state, the government said on Tuesday.
Sanchez’s agenda includes meetings with the prime ministers of Norway, Ireland, Portugal, Slovenia and Belgium focusing on the EU’s position regarding the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, government spokesperson Pilar Alegria told reporters.
“We want to stop the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and help kickstart a political peace process leading to the realization of the two-state solution as early as possible,” Alegria said.
Sanchez has previously said he expects Madrid to extend recognition to the Palestinians by July and that he believes there would soon be a “critical mass” within the EU to push several members to adopt the same position.
Spain, Ireland, Malta and Slovenia announced last month they would jointly work toward recognition of a Palestinian state.
Israel told the four EU countries their initiative would amount to a “prize for terrorism” that would reduce the chances of a negotiated resolution to the generations-old conflict.
Israeli forces launched a devastating air and ground offensive in Gaza in October after militants of the Palestinian enclave’s ruling Islamist group Hamas went on a killing and kidnapping spree inside Israel.
The EU has had much less sway on the conflict than the United States, Israel’s closest ally, which has said a peace deal and Palestinian statehood in territory Israel occupied in a 1967 war can be reached only through direct negotiations, which have been stalled by entrenched disputes for a decade.
Since 1988, 139 out of 193 United Nations member states have recognized Palestinian statehood.
Sanchez is set to begin his diplomatic campaign with a trip to Oslo and Dublin on April 12, where he will meet with Norway’s Jonas Gahr Stoere and Ireland’s new premier Simon Harris.
Spanish PM to lobby EU partners for Palestinian state recognition
https://arab.news/5v8xv
Spanish PM to lobby EU partners for Palestinian state recognition
- Sanchez has previously said he expects Madrid to extend recognition to the Palestinians by July
- He believes there would soon be a “critical mass” within the EU to push several members to adopt the same position
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
