Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albarez said today that he will call on the remaining 26 EU member states to declare with a joint declaration their official support for the International Court of Justice in The Hague and to take steps to ensure that Israel respects its decisions, reported Reuters and BTA.
"I will ask our twenty-six partners to declare their support for the International Court of Justice and its decision, and furthermore, if Israel continues to defy the court's opinion, we will try to take the right measures to bring this decision is in effect", Jose Manuel Albarez told media representatives in the Belgian capital Brussels, where the meeting of the EU Council on Foreign Affairs is taking place.
He gave a joint press conference with his colleagues from Norway - Espen Bart Eide, and from Ireland - Michal Martin. The three countries have announced their decision to recognize a Palestinian state and are expected to make it official tomorrow.
Nine out of a total of 27 member states of the European Union recognize the State of Palestine. Eight of them did so before joining the bloc - even after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat declared Palestine an independent state on November 15, 1988 - Malta, Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia), Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. They were followed in 2014 by Sweden, which became the first country to recognize Palestine after joining the EU.
On Friday, the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered Israel to "immediately" to halt military action against the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory was "catastrophic".