The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Jose Manuel Albareshas rejected this Monday the initiative launched by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, so that Jordan and Egypt welcome more than one and a half million displaced people from the Gaza Stripensuring that “the place of Gazans is Gaza” and the EU has to support the population of the Strip and work on reconstruction.
“The place of the Gazans, of the Palestinians of Gaza, is precisely in the Gaza Strip. What we have to do is help them with their most basic needs and reconstruction,” Albares said in statements upon arrival at the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.
Faced with the initiative of the new American president, who have already rejected both Egypt and Jordanthe Spanish Foreign Minister has defended that “the Gazans have to remain in Gaza.” “Gaza is part of the future Palestinian state“We have to put Gaza and the West Bank under a single Palestinian National Authority as soon as possible and what we all have to do, and very clearly the European Union, is to help the Palestinians in Gaza,” he stressed.
Along these same lines, Albares has confirmed Spain’s commitment to the population of the Strip and to working to “alleviate” the situation of “humanitarian catastrophe”, contributing food aid, health, promote education and guarantee the presence of the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA).
Trump confirmed this past Saturday that he will propose to Egypt and Jordan the possibility of receiving one and a half million displaced people from the Gaza Strip for “accommodation” in the medium or long term, at least while the reconstruction of the enclave lasts, a scenario which both countries have already rejected and the Palestinian Authority has described as “flagrant violation of red lines of which we constantly warn.
2% of defense spending
Furthermore, Albares has assured In 2029, Spain will reach the objective of its military spending amounting to 2% of GDPas is required of NATO partners, on the eve of the meeting this afternoon between the Secretary General of the Alliance, Mark Rutte, and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
“Spain has very clearly established a time horizon, which is 2029, to reach 2%, which is what is currently set in NATO as defense spending,” Albares said in statements to the press upon his arrival at the Council of Foreign Ministers of the European Union in Brussels.
Albares recalled that Spain has increased its defense spending “for years now” and “is getting closer” to that objective and stressed that the country has already complied with other commitments set by the Atlantic Alliance, such as that 20% of its defense spending is allocated to large equipment, a threshold that “Spain widely exceeds.”
