Israel on Friday summoned the ambassadors of Belgium and Spain to be “sternly reprimanded” after the prime ministers of the two countries earlier denounced Egypt’s “destruction of Gaza” and urged the Israeli government to “recognize the state of Palestine” ».

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen “ordered the ambassadors of these two countries to be summoned to be severely reprimanded,” his office said. According to the Israeli foreign minister, the two prime ministers showed with their statements that they “support terrorism”.

In a separate statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “strongly condemned” their statements, accusing them of not “holding Hamas fully responsible for the crimes against humanity it has committed by massacring our citizens and using Palestinians as human shields.”

Reacting, the head of Spanish diplomacy, Jose Manuel Alvarez, told Spanish public television that he had “summoned the ambassador of Israel to explain the unacceptable and false accusations made by the government of Israel against the prime minister” of Spain and Belgium his counterpart.

On the Egyptian side of the border, at the checkpoint in Rafah, Belgian Prime Minister Alexandre De Croix ruled yesterday that the Israeli response to the Hamas attack had to be done with respect “to international humanitarian law”.

Hamas’s health ministry has recorded nearly 15,000 deaths – two-thirds of the victims were women and children – in the mass shelling of the Gaza Strip since militants of the Palestinian Islamist movement attacked southern sectors of the Israeli territory on October 7, killing 1,200. also mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities.

“Civilian deaths must stop,” the Belgian prime minister insisted.

By his side, his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez, with whom they met yesterday in Cairo with the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, called for the “recognition of the state of Palestine by the international community and Israel”. He also called the civilian deaths “totally unacceptable”.

After the outbreak of war on October 7, Belize and Bolivia severed diplomatic relations with Israel. Other countries (Turkey, Colombia, Chile…) recalled their ambassadors for consultations.

In late November, the Israeli government recalled the country’s ambassador to South Africa for consultations, after Pretoria recalled all its diplomats serving in Israel.