Israel has given a new twist in the spiral of and accuses the Government of Pedro Sánchez of “waging a diplomatic war” for which “it will pay a price”, in the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement broadcast by video this Friday. The Israeli Executive has ordered the expel of the Spanish representatives in the multinational body Civil and Military Coordination Center (CMCC), which it supervises in October last year.
“Whoever attacks the State of Israel, and not the terrorist regimes [en alusión a Irán] “It will not be our partner in the region,” Netanyahu warned, accusing the Spanish Government of defaming Israeli soldiers in recent conflicts.
*Statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu*
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this afternoon (Friday, 10 April 2026) [translated from Hebrew]:
“Israel will not remain silent in the face of those who attack us.
Spain has defamed our heroes, the soldiers of the IDF, the…
— Government Press Office 🇮🇱 (@GPOIsrael)
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has followed Netanyahu’s instructions. “The Government of Pedro Sánchez has such a marked anti-Israel bias,” he said, “that it has lost all capacity to serve as a useful actor in the application of the president’s peace plan. [de Estados Unidos, Donald] Trump and in the CMCC that operates within the framework of said plan.” His statement was also published this Friday by the , in which it was stated that Spain had been notified of the decision.
Minister Saar has also referred to the “anti-Israeli obsession” of the Spanish Executive to justify the veto of Spanish participants in the CMCC, based in the Israeli town of Kiryat Gat, located 25 kilometers northeast of the border with Gaza. Military personnel from the United States and Israel supervise it through giant screens and remote control systems, together with a coalition made up of twenty countries, including Spain, which has a symbolic representation in it.
“The FCCC is designed to support stabilization efforts. US military personnel will not be deployed in Gaza, but will help facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical and security assistance from their international counterparts to the Strip,” he detailed in October, when it began operating, in a statement cited by the Efe agency.
Escalation in the dispute
The Israeli decision is the latest escalation in the diplomatic dispute with Madrid. It occurs after Spain has announced the reopening of its Embassy in Iran, following the ceasefire agreed with the United States, and the incident in which the Spanish blue helmet of the United Nations Force for Lebanon (Unifil) was involved.
This Thursday, the Israeli Minister of the Diaspora and Fight against Anti-Semitism, Amichai Chikli, called Sánchez a “complete and absolute nobody,” after the president criticized Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. “Many European leaders are trapped in a deep moral vertigo that is dragging their nations towards the abyss. But in your case, this is not confusion. It is alignment. A deliberate alignment with Iran, with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with pure evil. There are no words to describe my contempt for you,” Chikli wrote in X.
Pedro Sánchez will be remembered as the man whose face was etched by a terror regime that massacred tens of thousands of its own citizens onto a ballistic missile aimed at innocent civilians.
Let me remind you, Mr. Sánchez: Israel did not attack Lebanon, not on October 8 and not…
— Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli)
President Pedro Sánchez has again urged EU members this Friday to suspend the association agreement with Israel in the face of the “flagrant violations of international humanitarian law that are being committed.” “Let’s not allow a new Gaza in Lebanon,” he said during his speech at the European Pulse Forum, in Barcelona. Sánchez has not made any reference to the Israeli Government’s criticism of Spain.
Before Netanyahu’s statements became known, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, had called Minister Amichai Chikli’s words “absurd and slanderous.” In statements to TVE this Friday, Albares stressed that Spain has condemned the human rights violations by the Tehran regime and has approved all the sanctions packages approved by the EU. But he has accused Israel of “trying to undermine” talks between the United States and Iran to end the war, even before they sit down in Islamabad this Saturday, with their attacks on Lebanon.
