Foreign ministers from European and Middle Eastern nations are set to meet in the Spanish capital of Madrid later today as part of efforts to step up pressure on Israel to end its bombardment of Gaza, according to Al Jazeera.
The talks — which will bring together diplomats from Spain, Norway, Slovenia, Ireland, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkiye, Egypt, Qatar and Bahrain — will be the fifth meeting of the Arab-Islamic Contact Group or the Madrid Group.
“We want to mobilise the voices of the EU but also those outside the European Union in Arab and Islamic countries,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told the El País newspaper last week.
“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,” he said.
The talks will also include discussions on an upcoming international conference on the two-state solution, which is set to take place at UN headquarters in New York in June. That conference will be co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France.