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UNITED NATIONS: Spain’s top diplomat dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that there will never be a Palestinian state, saying Israelis will one day want to live side by side in peace with Palestinians.
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday that “a real wave” of countries have recognized the state of Palestine since Spain, Ireland and Norway did in May 2024 and an overwhelming number support a two-state solution to the nearly 80-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The day that everyone will have recognized the state of Palestine, we will have to move forward,” he said at the United Nations. “I’m sure that we will find someday the right people for peace on the Israel side, in the same way that we have found it in the Palestinian side” in the Palestinian Authority.
Spain has been in the forefront in pressuring Israel to end the war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’ surprise invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, criticizing “the atrocities” and “endless killing” it is committing in the territory.
Albares spoke before a UN General Assembly meeting at its annual gathering of world leaders. At the meeting, the Palestinians expected 10 recent and new countries to formally recognize the state of Palestine, adding to the list of more than 145 nations that already have. France, Luxembourg, Belgium and others did so at the meeting, even after Netanyahu reiterated his vow that there will never be a Palestinian state. Weekend recognitions came from the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
The Spanish minister called Hamas “a terrorist organization” that doesn’t want a two-state solution. “So let’s put aside the extremists, and let’s look for the people that want a peaceful and secure coexistence.”
Spain is a vocal critic of Israeli action
Albares said Spain has staked out one of the strongest positions against Israel’s actions in Gaza because “we cannot accept that the natural way for the people in the Middle East to relate is through war, through violence.”
Israel has the right to peace, stability, security and a state and so do the Palestinians, he said. “I don’t see why they should be condemned to be eternally a people of refugees.”
Albares said that it was impossible for Spain, as a democratic country that believes in human rights, to have a “normal relation with Israel” while “this endless war continues.”
In recent weeks, Spain ratcheted up its opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the war a “genocide” earlier this month when he announced plans to formalize an arms embargo and block Israel-bound fuel deliveries from passing through Spanish ports. Netanyahu accused Sánchez of a “blatant genocidal threat.”
The following week, pro-Palestine protesters for whom the government expressed its support disrupted the final leg of an international cycling competition in Madrid due to the presence of a team with ties to Israel.
In the incident’s aftermath, Sánchez called for Israel to be banned from all international sporting events while the war continues. A diplomatic tit-for-tat ensued in which both countries banned ministers and Israeli leaders accused the Spanish government of being “antisemitic.”
Albares said that in pressuring Israel to end the war in Gaza, Spain is defending the principles that underpin the creation of the United Nations after World War II — peace, justice, human rights and human dignity.
Balancing demands from Trump
On another contentious issue, the minister defended Spain’s refusal to spend 5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense as US President Donald Trump demanded. At a NATO conference in June, the Sánchez government was the only NATO member to say it would not increase spending to that level.
“We are going to meet the targets and the commitments that are needed for Euro-Atlantic security within NATO,” Albares said. “We said in order to meet them we don’t need the 5 percent, we can do it with 2.1 percent. We have already reached the 2 percent target.”
Citing Spain’s military deployments along Europe’s eastern flank including “a historical peak” of 3,000 soldiers among its contributions to European security, he said, “We are a very committed ally to transatlantic security.”
Albares said the US is a “historic, natural ally” of Spain and Europeans. “Let’s keep doing it in the same way. But, of course, we need two for a tango,” he said. What’s clear, Albares said, is that Europe must increasingly take its destiny into its own hands whether it’s ramping up internal trade or security.
Looking at broader challenges from the severity of wars to poverty, climate change and artificial intelligence advancements with no guardrails, Albares said the only answer to address them is by all countries working together — the multilateral approach that underpins the UN mission.
“At the end,” he said, “cooperation is always much ... stronger than confrontation.”

ISLAMABAD:In their Pakistan safehouse, Shayma and her family try to keep their voices low so their neighbors don’t overhear their Afghan mother tongue.
But she can belt out Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” any time she likes, and no-one would guess it comes from a 15-year-old refugee in hiding.
“In the kitchen, the sound is very good,” she told AFP alongside her sister and fellow young bandmates.
By now, Shayma should have been testing the acoustics of her new home in New York.
But before her family’s scheduled February flight, US President Donald Trump indefinitely suspended refugee admissions, stranding around 15,000 Afghans already prepared to fly out from Islamabad.
Thousands more are waiting in the city for relocation to other Western nations, but shifting global sentiment toward refugees has diminished their chances and put them at risk of a renewed deportation drive by Pakistan, where they have long exhausted their welcome.
For girls and women, the prospect is particularly devastating: a return to the only country in the world that has banned them from most education and jobs.
“We will do whatever it takes to hide ourselves,” said Shayma’s 19-year-old bandmate, Zahra.
“For girls like us, there is no future in Afghanistan.”
’Not a transit camp’
After the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, tens of thousands of Afghans traveled to neighboring Pakistan to register refugee and asylum applications with Western embassies, often on the advice of officials.
Many had worked for the US-led NATO forces or Western NGOs, while others were activists, musicians or journalists.
Four years on, thousands are still waiting, mostly in the capital Islamabad or its outskirts, desperately hoping that one of the embassies will budge and offer them safe haven.
Hundreds have been arrested and deported in recent weeks, and AFP gave interviewees pseudonyms for their protection.
“This is not an indefinite transit camp,” a Pakistan government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He said Pakistan would allow Afghans with pending cases to stay if Western nations assured the government that they would resettle them.
“Multiple deadlines were agreed but they were not honored,” he added.
Miraculous music
The teenaged musicians learned to play guitar back in Kabul at a nonprofit music school for girls, who are now dispersed across Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States.
“We want to use our music for those who don’t have a voice, especially for the girls and women of Afghanistan,” said Zahra, one of the four in Pakistan.
The school opened under Kabul’s previous US-backed government, when foreign-funded initiatives proliferated alongside NATO troops.
Overcoming social taboos, Shayma and her sister Laylama attended the after-school lessons run by an American former arena rocker, who helped kids get off the streets and into guitar practice.
One of 10 siblings, Laylama sold sunflower seeds to help support the family. She had cherished a stringless plastic guitar, until she encountered the real thing.
“Music really changed our life,” she said.
But fearing retribution from the Taliban government, which considers Western music anti-Islamic, Laylama’s father burned her guitar.
“I cried all night,” the 16-year-old told AFP.
’Drastic measures’
Since they were smuggled into Pakistan in April 2022 to apply for refugee status with the United States, Shayma and her bandmates have had to move four times, driven deeper into hiding.
At the start of Pakistan’s crackdown in 2023, the US embassy provided the government with a list of Afghans in its pipeline that should be spared, according to a former staffer with the State Department’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts.
That office, and the protections it offered, have been dismantled by the Trump administration.
“Leaving these refugees in limbo is not just arbitrary, it’s cruel,” said Jessica Bradley Rushing of the advocacy coalition #AfghanEvac.
As Pakistan expands its “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan” to include refugees, it may be seeking leverage over foreign partners in its counter-terrorism campaign, said International Crisis Group analyst Ibraheem Bahiss.
“These are really drastic measures not only to put pressure on the Taliban government but also to show the international community they are very serious,” he told AFP.
For the girls, every day brings the fear that a knock on the door will send them back.
Outside, mosque loudspeakers in Afghan neighborhoods order migrants to leave, while refugees are picked up from their homes or workplaces, or off the street.
To stem their anxiety, the girls maintain rigorous daily routines, starting with the dawn call to prayer.
They rehearse a Farsi version of Coldplay’s “Arabesque” and a riff on Imagine Dragons’ “Believer.”
They also practice English through YouTube videos and reading “Frankenstein.”
“It’s not normal to always stay in the house, especially for children. They should be in nature,” Zahra said.
“But going back to Afghanistan? It’s a horrible idea.”