Egypt’s FM to attend Madrid Group meeting on Gaza war, recognition of Palestinian state

CAIRO – 25 May 2025: Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr Abdelatty is traveling to Spain to participate in the Madrid Group ministerial meeting on the Palestinian cause on Sunday.

The meeting will focus on global efforts to end the war in Gaza, address the humanitarian crisis in the enclave, and ensure access to relief aid, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Participating ministers from European, Arab, and Muslim countries will emphasize the need to mobilize global support for recognizing the State of Palestine and implementing the two-state solution as the path to peace and stability in the Middle East.

The Madrid Group meeting will convene ministers from European nations alongside the Arab-Islamic Contact Group on Gaza, established in November 2023 following a joint statement by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Riyadh.

This gathering marks the fifth meeting of the Madrid Group since the formation of the Gaza contact group.

“We want to mobilize the voices of the EU, but also those outside the European Union, in Arab and Islamic countries," Spanish El Pais news website quoted Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares as saying in an interview on Tuesday.

“We all want the same thing: to end this war, prevent Gaza from becoming a mass graveyard, and break the Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid,” Albares said.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called for global pressure on Israel to “halt the massacre in Gaza” as he addressed the 34th Arab League summit held in Baghdad on Saturday#Egypt #Africa #MENAhttps://t.co/NrqTcSAKuu

— Egypt Today Magazine (@EgyptTodayMag) May 18, 2025

The previous Madrid Group meeting in September 2024 included some of the European countries that advocate for Palestinian statehood, namely Spain, Norway, Slovenia, and Ireland.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Jordan, Turkiye, Qatar, and Bahrain represented the Arab-Islamic perspective during that session, which called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all captives.

In its communiqué, the meeting underscored the need for the credible and irreversible implementation of the two-state solution in accordance with international law.

The ministers highlighted that this solution aims to establish a just and lasting peace, uphold the rights of the Palestinian people, ensure Israel's security, and promote stability and cooperation in the region.

Recently, many European and Western countries have voiced support for recognizing a Palestinian state.

Last week, leaders from Canada, the United Kingdom, and France jointly stressed their commitment to this recognition as part of achieving a two-state solution, expressing readiness to collaborate with others toward this goal.

Israel, who is facing unprecedented pressures from its closest allies over its handling of the war in Gaza, has pledged to resume a “minimal” amount of humanitarian aid into the enclave after nearly three months of blockade#Egypt #Africa #MENAhttps://t.co/I41eHztROJ

— Egypt Today Magazine (@EgyptTodayMag) May 21, 2025

Out of 27 European Union member states, 11 recognize Palestine, with eight having done so before the outbreak of the Israeli war in Gaza in October 2023. These countries include Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Sweden.

Since the war began, ten more countries have recognized Palestine, four of them European: Ireland, Spain, Norway (not an EU member), and Slovenia.

In total, 147 countries recognize a Palestinian state, representing around 75 percent of the world's nations.

The ongoing war in Gaza has intensified global calls for swift action toward implementing the two-state solution, which Arab and Islamic countries as well as many other nations view as the only path toward lasting peace in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, vowing to continue military operations in Gaza to permanently relocate Palestinians from their lands, in line with a Gaza takeover plan announced by US President Donald Trump in February.

Arab and European countries have dismissed Trump’s proposal, affirming that Gaza is an integral part of a future Palestinian state under the envisioned two-state solution.

Since the war broke out in Gaza, Israeli forces have killed nearly 54,000 people, predominantly women and children, according to local health officials, flattening most of the enclave and pushing the population close toward famine.