MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday called for a de-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, as Lebanon said 37 people had now been killed by booby-trapped hand-held devices.

“Today the risk of escalation is once more increasing in a dangerous way” in Lebanon, Sanchez told a news conference in Madrid after more than an hour of talks with visiting Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

“So we must again make a fresh appeal for restraint, for a de-escalation and for peaceful coexistence between countries, in the name of peace,” he added.

Abbas also called for a new peace conference in the Spanish capital aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, modelled on the 1991 Madrid talks that led to the 1993 Oslo accords.

Urging a two-state solution, long a cornerstone of international attempts to end the decades-long conflict, Sanchez said a Palestinian nation “living side by side with the state of Israel” was the only way to “bring stability to the region”.

Abbas’s visit was his first to Spain since Madrid took the decision to recognise a Palestinian state on May 28. Ireland and Norway took the same decision in May.

“Why is this a good thing? Because Palestine exists and has the right to have its own state,” Sanchez said.

Abbas expressed his thanks for Sanchez’s support and Spain’s recognition, urging “all states that have not yet recognised us to do so”. Neither Sanchez nor Abbas referred directly to the explosions of electronic devices that rocked Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday in the latest escalation of tensions.

Palestinian state recognition

Even before that stunning act of apparent sabotage, tensions were running high in the Middle East, in large part due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since the conflict began, Sanchez has positioned himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause within the European Union.

His socialist government has increasingly taken highly critical positions towards Israel’s conduct of its campaign against Hamas, rival to Abbas’s own Fatah party which controls the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

“The international community and Europe cannot remain impassive in the face of the suffering of thousands of innocents, largely women and children,” he added.

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2024