Israel denounced this week a vote by the Spanish lower house of Parliament calling on the government in Madrid to recognize a Palestinian state, hours after a deadly Jerusalem synagogue terror attack.
The vote, which is merely symbolic, aims to push the parties to reach a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It follows similar moves in Britain and Ireland last month.
The French parliament will also vote on recognizing a Palestinian state on November 28.
‘’This vote is unhelpful and it only pushes away further the chances of reaching an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, because it encourages the Palestinians to take extreme position,ns,’’ a foreign ministry spokesperson said about the Spanish decision.
“It would have been better if the Spanish parliament had instead chosen to do the right thing by condemning the abominable slaughter carried out by inflamed Palestinians in a synagogue in Jerusalem.”
The vote took place several hours after two Palestinian terrorists from East Jerusalem staged a frenzied attack with meat cleavers and a gun at a synagogue in Jerusalem, killing four rabbis at prayer and a policeman.
Spanish Ambassador Fernando Carderera Soler, in an Israel Radio interview, acknowledged that the timing of the vote came at “a very bad moment.” But, he said, “a terrorist attack is a terrorist attack, it cannot affect your life, and life has to go on, and so [it] is also with the parliament.”
The ambassador took issue with the Foreign Ministry statement, saying the motion’s text was “balanced” and “very positive for all parties, including Israel.”
“It doesn’t worsen the situation, and this is not what the Spanish parliamentarians want to do, the Spanish parliamentarians want to provide an incentive for negotiations,” he said.
Asked how Madrid would respond were the Knesset to pass a resolution backing Basque or Catalonian independence, the ambassador said the Knesset would have “no ground whatsoever” to get involved in those issues, “not historically, legally, politicaly".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the international community of ignoring the bloodshed and seeking instead to reward the Palestinians, in a thinly veiled reference to the vote.
“Unfortunately, there are some who are trying even now to give the Palestinians a prize… of a Palestinian state, which doesn’t even recognize the Jewish state,” he said.
Israel has said repeatedly that the Palestinians will only secure their long-promised state through bilateral negotiations and not through unilateral recognition by foreign states or by the United Nations.
On October 30, Sweden’s new left-leaning government went a step further and officially recognized a Palestinian state, becoming the first EU member to do so and prompting Israel to recall its ambassador in Stockholm.