The head of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, will meet this Friday in Dubai at the COP28 climate summit in the midst of a diplomatic crisis between both countries and a day after the announcement by the Israeli authorities to call for consultations to his ambassador in Madrid.
Sánchez and Herzog will participate in that session and will be present in the family photo of the leaders attending this event, but a priori there is no expectation that they will be able to maintain any contact.
Both met last Thursday in Jerusalem on the occasion of the tour that the head of the Government made through Israel, Palestine and Egypt to address the situation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, arrived in Dubai this Thursday afternoon to attend the COP28 climate summit, in which he will demand that the rest of the leaders have more ambition to fight against climate change.
This is his second trip to the Middle East within a week after the tour he made last Thursday and Friday through Israel, Palestine and Egypt.
Sánchez plans to hold a series of bilateral meetings with other leaders within the framework of COP28 and it is foreseeable that in some of them he will address the situation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
But its activities in Dubai are framed in the climate summit, and the message it carries is that Spain wants to continue being in the vanguard group of countries fighting climate change.
He will ask for more ambition from the international community to meet the objectives that have been set and will reiterate Spain's commitment to identifying the financial instruments necessary to mobilize the actions that lead to this.
Among the meetings with other leaders there is one with the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but whose main topic is the talks between the European Union and Mercosur to try to immediately close an agreement.
Among other events on his agenda, he will participate as co-organizer in a forum developed together with the European Commission on how to promote carbon markets and in which Sánchez and the president of the European Commission, Úrsula von der Leyen, will present the mechanism adopted by the EU and its results.
In the meeting he held a few days ago, Sánchez asked Herzog that his country comply with international law in its response to Hamas attacks and that humanitarian aid can reach Gaza.
He later raised the same request to Netanyahu, and the next day, at the Rafah crossing, he opened the door for Spain to unilaterally recognize the Palestinian state if some European Union countries do not move together in that direction.
His words, in an event with the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo, caused the Israeli Foreign Ministry to summon the ambassadors of both countries because it considered that his words represented support for terrorism, something that the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares considered it "false and unacceptable" and led him to summon the Israeli ambassador in Madrid.
Last Tuesday Albares considered the diplomatic crisis settled, but it has worsened after statements by Sánchez in which this Thursday he once again stated that he has "frank doubts" that Israel is complying with international law in Gaza.
After them, the head of Israeli diplomacy, Eli Cohen, has called his ambassador in Spain for consultations over those "outrageous" words, a decision that became known while Sánchez was traveling on the Spanish Air Force plane that took him to Dubai.
Previously, Israel had also announced that it would call the Spanish ambassador in Tel Aviv to convey a "reprimand."
In the midst of this upsurge in the diplomatic crisis, Sánchez and Herzog will coincide at the opening of COP28, in which Israel has announced that its president will hold meetings with various leaders to "highlight clearly and deeply the atrocities" of Hamas and involve them. in the effort to return the hostages held by this terrorist organization.
It is foreseeable that in the bilateral meetings that Sánchez also maintains with other leaders, he will present the Spanish position regarding the conflict.
The president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is also scheduled to attend the opening session of COP28.
