‘A Unique Opportunity’: What the EU Can Learn from Spain’s Increasing Pressure on Israel

For the past year and a half, Spain has been part of a select group of European countries highly critical of Israel’s massacre in Gaza; in the space of a week, it has doubled down and set itself ahead of the pack. This shift offers Europe a blueprint. “From a Spanish perspective, the EU has not been up to the task regarding the severity and urgency of the situation”, claims Moussa Bourekba, a research fellow focusing on the Middle East at the CIDOB think tank. That’s why, for the last year and a half, Spain has worked on leading a group of countries in an effort to be an influence “on the European scale” and fill the void left by the union. As the war on Gaza has ensued, Spain’s stance on Israel has increasingly been seen as prescient. Now, as the violence in Gaza persists and the urgency grows, Bourekba believes the EU and its member states have a “unique opportunity” to push Israel toward de-escalation. The recent diplomatic shift “has sent Israel the message that it cannot continue acting this way,” he says –but warns that Europe must move beyond “symbolic” gestures. Bourekba argues in favour of going further in the form of economic sanctions and cutting political ties with Israel, “just as what Europe has done with Russia” following the invasion of Ukraine. “Otherwise, it’s just double standards”, he claims.