What is the dispute between Spain and Argentina’s leaders? | Politics

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A rift between Argentina and Spain is deepening. Argentina’s President Javier Milei and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez are in a war of words, prompted by Milei’s comments about Sanchez’s wife. Al Jazeera’s Soraya Lennie lays it out.

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Ronaldo tops Forbes’ list of highest-paid athletes again, Rahm second | Football News

Former Manchester United and Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo is named highest-paid athlete for a fourth time.

Cristiano Ronaldo topped Forbes’ list of highest-paid athletes for the fourth time in his career while Spanish golfer Jon Rahm moved up to second following his sensational switch to Saudi-backed LIV Golf.

Ronaldo became the world’s highest-paid athlete after his move to Saudi Arabian side Al-Nassr and Forbes said the 39-year-old footballer’s estimated total earnings were in the region of $260m, an all-time high for a football player.

His on-field earnings amounted to $200m while his off-field earnings were $60m, thanks to sponsorship deals where brands make use of his 629 million Instagram followers.

Twice major winner Rahm joined LIV Golf in December in a big-money move that sent shockwaves through the sport after media reports said the current world number five would be paid at least $300m.

Apart from that guarantee, Rahm has earned $218m and joins Ronaldo as the only two athletes to earn over $200m.

Third on the list is record eight-times Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi, who made a lucrative switch to Major League Soccer side Inter Miami, helping the Argentine World Cup winner earn $135m.

The 36-year-old has earned $65m in on-field earnings but $70m off it thanks to deals with major sponsors such as Adidas and Apple.

Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James is fourth at $128.2m and although the 39-year-old, the first NBA player to score 40,000 career points, is nearing the end of his career, the American is set to have one last crack at the Olympics.

Fellow NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo ($111m) of the Milwaukee Bucks rounds out the top five while France soccer captain Kylian Mbappe has dropped down to sixth ($110m).

Mbappe announced he would be leaving Paris Saint-Germain after seven years in the French capital where he became the club’s all-time leading scorer and the 25-year-old is expected to join Spanish giants Real Madrid in the close season.

Former PSG star Neymar, who also moved to the Saudi Pro League to join Al-Hilal, is seventh ($108m) despite sitting out the majority of the season with a torn ACL.

French striker Karim Benzema, who also moved to Saudi Arabia, is eighth ($106m) on the list followed by Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry ($102m).

Lamar Jackson is the only NFL player on the list in 10th place ($100.5m) thanks to the signing bonus that was negotiated in his new Baltimore Ravens contract last year.

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Northern lights illuminate night skies around the world | Newsfeed

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Solar flares sparked the biggest geomagnetic storm in two decades, causing spectacular displays of auroras, or northern lights, in skies around the world.

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Police break up pro-Palestine protests at Berlin, Amsterdam campuses | Protests News

Police have broken up a protest by several hundred pro-Palestinian activists who occupied a courtyard at Berlin’s Free University, the latest such action by authorities as protests that have roiled campuses in the United States spread across Europe.

The move on Tuesday came after activists had put up about 20 tents and formed a human chain around them to protest against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Most had covered their faces with medical masks and had draped keffiyah scarves around their heads, shouting slogans such as “Viva, viva Palestina.” Police called on the students to leave the campus at the university in the German capital.

Police could also be seen carrying some students away and some scuffles erupted between police officers and protesters. Authorities used pepper spray against some of the protesters.

“The demands of the people were pretty clear, basically saying that it’s time that Germany should take part in the protest movement around the world,” said Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane.

“They demand that the genocide they say is taking place in Gaza be stopped. They also say that students who take part in these protests should not be banned from doing so and should not lose their status as students – that is something that many students who’ve taken part in protests are afraid of,” Kane said, reporting from the scene.

The school’s administrators said in a statement that the protesters had rejected any kind of dialogue and they had therefore called in police to clear the campus.

“This form of protest is not geared towards dialogue. An occupation is not acceptable on the FU Berlin campus,” university President Guenter Ziegler said. FU is the abbreviation for Free University. “We are available for academic dialog – but not in this way.”

The administrators said some protesters attempted to enter rooms and lecture halls at Free University to occupy them.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupy a courtyard at Freie Universitat (FU) Berlin with a protest camp [Annegret Hilse/Reuters]

Amsterdam encampment broken up

Earlier on Tuesday, police arrested about 140 activists as they broke up a similar pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Amsterdam.

Amsterdam police said on social media that their action was “necessary to restore order” after protests turned violent. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Video from the scene aired by national broadcaster NOS shows police using a mechanical digger to push down barricades and officers with batons and shields moving in, beating some of the protesters and pulling down tents. Protesters had formed barricades from wooden pallets and bicycles, NOS reported.

After clearing the Amsterdam protest by early afternoon Tuesday, police closed off the area by metal fences. Students sat along the banks of a nearby canal.

“The war between Israel and Hamas is having a major impact on individual students and staff,” the school said in a statement. “We share the anger and bewilderment over the war, and we understand that there are protests over it. We stress that within the university, dialogue about it is the only answer,” it said.

Anywhere else?

Other encampments have popped up in recent days in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom, seemingly inspired by a wave of protests at US campuses.

In Finland, dozens of protesters from the Students for Palestine solidarity group set up an encampment outside the main building at the University of Helsinki, saying they would stay there until the university, Finland’s largest academic institution, cuts academic ties with Israeli universities.

In Denmark, students set up a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Copenhagen, erecting about 45 tents outside the campus of the Faculty of Social Sciences. The university said students can protest but called on them to respect the rules on campus grounds. “Seek dialogue, not conflict and make room for perspectives other than your own,” the administrators said on X.

On their Facebook page, members of the activist group Students Against the Occupation said their attempts to talk to the administration over the past two years about withdrawing the school’s investments from companies with ties to activities in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories have been in vain.

“We can no longer be satisfied with cautious dialogue that does not lead to concrete action,” the group said.

In Italy, students at the University of Bologna, one of the world’s oldest universities, set up a tent encampment over the weekend to demand an end to the war in Gaza as Israel prepared an offensive in Rafah, despite pleas from its Western allies against it. Groups of students organised similar protests in Rome and Naples, which were largely peaceful.

In Spain, dozens of students have spent more than a week at a pro-Palestinian encampment on the University of Valencia campus. Similar camps were set up Monday at the University of Barcelona and the University of the Basque Country. A group representing students at Madrid’s public universities announced it would step up protests against the war in the coming days.

On Friday, French police peacefully removed dozens of students from a building at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, after they had gathered in support of Palestinians.

On Tuesday, students at the prestigious institution, which counts French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and President Emmanuel Macron among its alumni, were seen entering the campus unobstructed to take exams as police stood at the entrances.

Protests took place last week at some other universities in France, including in Lille and Lyon. Macron’s office said police had been requested to remove students from 23 sites on French campuses.

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Spain and Argentina trade jibes in row before visit by President Milei | Politics News

The spat began when Spain’s transport minister said Argentina’s Javier Milei took drugs during last year’s election.

Spain and Argentina have their diplomatic daggers drawn and have traded jibes over drug use and economic decline.

The spat began on Friday when Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente, during a panel discussion in Salamanca, suggested that Argentina’s President Javier Milei had ingested “substances” during last year’s election campaign.

“I saw Milei on television” during the campaign, Puente told a Socialist Party conference.

“I don’t know if it was before or after the consumption … of substances.”

He also listed Milei among some “very bad people” who have reached high office.

Milei’s office responded on Saturday in a statement condemning the remarks and also attacking Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

The statement accused Sanchez of “endangering Spanish women by allowing illegal immigration” and undermining Spain’s integrity by making deals with separatists, while his left-wing policies brought “death and poverty”.

Spain reacted with fury.

“The Spanish government categorically rejects the unfounded words … which do not reflect the relations between the two countries and their fraternal people,” the Spanish foreign ministry said.

“The government and the Spanish people will continue to maintain and strengthen their fraternal links and their relations of friendship and collaboration with the Argentine people, a desire shared by all of Spanish society,” the statement added.

The spat comes two weeks before a visit to Spain by Argentina’s “anarcho-capitalist” president.

Milei will attend an event of the far-right Vox party and will be avoiding meeting Spain’s socialist head of government, Sanchez.

The two have never had good relations.

Sanchez supported Milei’s rival Sergio Massa in the election that brought Milei to power in December and has also not contacted Milei since the victory.

Milei has meanwhile publicly supported Spain’s far-right anti-immigration Vox party. Vox leader Santiago Abascal also went to Buenos Aires for Milei’s investiture.



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Luis Rubiales denies ‘irregularities’ in Spanish football corruption probe | Football News

The former Spanish football chief is being questioned as part of a corruption probe during his time in charge.

Disgraced former Spanish football federation chief Luis Rubiales has denied any financial “irregularities” after testifying in court in a corruption probe into his time in charge.

“What I maintain, and will always maintain, and I am convinced that justice will [demonstrate], is there has never been any money received in an irregular way,” Rubiales told reporters after leaving a Madrid court on Monday.

Rubiales, 46, who resigned following global outrage after he forcibly kissed Women’s World Cup star Jenni Hermoso last summer after the final match, testified at length.

“I have answered all the questions I was asked. If I have to come here again, I will be here, collaborating. I am the one most interested in clearing everything up,” said Rubiales.

Rubiales was briefly detained on his return to Spain from the Dominican Republic at the start of April as part of a probe into Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) contracts signed since 2018, including one signed by Rubiales to take the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia.

“There has never been any irregular tender. We have been paid with the utmost excellence and in the pursuit of legality,” added Rubiales.

On March 20, investigators searched Rubiales’s house in the southern city of Granada among 11 locations in the alleged graft scandal.

The raids were part of “an investigation linked to presumed crimes linked with corruption in business, fraudulent administration and money laundering”, according to judicial sources.

The Super Cup contracts are worth 40 million euros a year ($43.3 million) with the deal brokered by Kosmos, a company owned by former Barcelona and Spain defender Gerard Pique.

The Spanish Super Cup took place for the first time in Saudi Arabia in 2020.

It returned to Spain for a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the subsequent three editions have returned to the oil-rich Gulf state.

New Spanish football president Pedro Rocha is also under investigation in the alleged graft case.

Rocha served as federation vice-president under Rubiales, then replaced him on an interim basis before being elected as chief this week.

Rubiales is also set to go on trial over the nonconsensual kiss on Hermoso’s lips, which under Spanish law can be classed as sexual assault.

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Spain’s PM Sanchez to remain in office | Politics News

DEVELOPING STORY,

Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez has announced that he will not step down amid a corruption probe into his wife’s affairs, averting the threat of political gridlock in Madrid.

After meeting with King Felipe VI earlier on Monday, the left-leaning prime minister, who had stepped away from his duties as he mulled his response, vowed to continue in office “with even more strength”.

The 52-year-old Sanchez had surprised all when he said on Wednesday that he was taking time off to “reflect” on whether to resign, despite having insisted that the probe against his wife Begona Gomez was organised by Spain’s rival conservative political forces.

The prospect of Sanchez’s resignation last week had sparked some turmoil, with demonstrations organised both for and against him.

However, the Socialist Party leadership put its support behind the premier, while left-wing global leaders like Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro also backed him.

This is a developing story and will be updated soon …

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How an ancient water tunnel design is cooling 21st-century streets | Water News

Last summer, temperatures in the southern Spanish city of Seville hit more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). The heatwave was so intense it earned itself a name: Heatwave Yago, the city’s second named event in two years.

Seville, among other cities in Europe and around the world, is facing temperatures that it was not built to handle. In the summer of 2022, extreme heat melted railway lines and airport tarmac in London, England. In July 2023, Germans started considering midday siestas to escape the sweltering heat.

As temperatures soar, cities accustomed to cooler temperatures are seeking ways to adapt that avoid relying on energy-intensive solutions like air conditioning.

A small research group in Seville is taking inspiration from ancient Middle Eastern cultures that learned to live with the heat before electricity could provide respite.

Some see their efforts as honouring the wisdom of ancient thinkers, while others say that these old systems are far more than a technology – they reflect a mindset of sustainability that today’s world is desperately trying to resurrect.

‘Special relationship between humans and nature’

Majid Labbaf Khaneiki is one of a handful of experts helping bring 3,000-year-old underground aqueduct technology, called qanats, to the modern world.

Early qanat tunnels, which were built manually with picks and shovels, appeared in China, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan. However, scholars estimate the first qanat was born in the early first millennium in Persia, and then spread to arid regions throughout the world.

The ancient system is made up of a network of underground canals – 20 to 200 metres below the desert’s surface – that transport water from higher altitudes to lower ones. Built on a slight slope, the canals use gravity to transport the water. A series of well-like vertical shafts allow for access and maintenance.

From above, the system looks like thousands of lined-up anthills winding through the desert. The real excitement happens underground where the water is collected before it travels through the canals.

A qanat near Timimoun, Algeria. Qanats often look like anthills in the desert [DeAgostini/Getty Images]

Khaneiki, a 49-year-old professor in archaeohydrology at the University of Nizwa in Oman, has spent his entire career studying ancient tunnels that carry water under the surface of arid and semi-arid environments. He grew up in a house filled with history books and a father with a passion for archaeology.

Khaneiki’s family hails from a small arid village in Eastern Iran called Kanek – the linguistic root of his last name. Khaneiki spent some summers there growing up. “The only water that supplied that village was the qanat,” he says, adding that it ran directly through the village, allowing it to become an oasis of green in the middle of the desert.

“The qanat was actually a congregation point for people. I remember I met other children exactly at the place and we used to play there,” he says. “The qanat system goes hand-in-hand with social interaction. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested in it, because it is sort of an intrinsic part of my identity and personality.”

Khaneiki has kind eyes, and his conviction in qanats as systems of the future — not just the past — is emphatic. “My last name should have been qanat builder,” he says with a laugh. In the course of a few minutes, he rattles off modern qanat projects in Azerbaijan, Spain and Pakistan.

He explains how different the process of building these qanats is compared with the collaborative effort of ancient systems. For example, in Azerbaijan, the government built a new qanat using modern machinery in order to bring more jobs and resources to communities outside the populated cities and assuage internal migration. “This was a very top-down managerial way of doing it,” he says. “In the past, it was bottom-up”.

“The qanat system is not only tunnels in the ground,” Khaneiki says. “It is a lifestyle.”

A qanat (underground water channel) in Shafiabad village near Kerman in Iran. Qanats have been used to supply water in Iran since the 1st millennium BC [Leisa Tyler/LightRocket via Getty Images]

The ancient qanat system enabled irrigation in desert environments, allowed for agriculture to flourish and fostered community cooperation. It is seen as the basis for decentralised water management in Iran, and a more sustainable solution to modern pumping and dams.

“Qanats are one of the oldest notions of a company in the world,” says Negar Sanaan Bensi, a lecturer and researcher in the faculty of architecture at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. “They are based on a huge shareholding system” that requires different people living in a region to work together and use the water resources available.

It worked similarly to how a startup does today. A couple of people came together to start digging with hand-held tools for water. Once they got what they needed, more people would join and expand the tunnel, and take their share of the resources. Over time this spread throughout the country, with each municipality managing their local qanat. “They started with four or five people,” says Khaneiki. “But in the end they had hundreds of people cooperating.”

Khaneiki is now looking at how qanats are being used for new purposes and new forms – not for irrigation and cultivation, but for tourism and architectural purposes, he says, pointing to their traditional design and cultural significance, and the designation of some qanats as UNESCO tourism sites. China, which has 800 qanat systems, has built a museum explaining the history and engineering of the different systems. There are also statues of qanat builders digging tunnels with a pickaxe or collecting soil.

“They [qanats] are also coming back to life for the purposes of climate change,” Khaneiki says.

A shade structure in a sitting area at the unopened CartujaQanat pilot project, an architectural experiment in cooling solutions inspired by Persian-era canals [Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

How the old is being made new

Thousands of kilometres away from the arid regions of the Middle East, and even farther away from China, scientists Jose Sanchez Ramos and Servando Alvarez are using the concept of qanats to provide an oasis in the city of Seville.

As part of a city initiative to find solutions to rising temperatures, Ramos and Alvarez were given the opportunity to choose a location to experiment with bringing down temperatures in an outdoor space without relying on energy-intensive technologies.

One of those options was on La Isla de La Cartuja, an area northwest of the centre of Seville. The neighbourhood was once the location of the 1992 Seville Exposition, which drew 41 million visitors. Although the city has made some attempts to urbanise the space, these days it looks largely abandoned, with overgrown shrubbery, cracked sidewalks and a decrepit monorail station.

However, the area is home to a research and development complex that employs 15,000 people, a football stadium and the International University of Andalucía (UNIA). An abandoned amphitheatre used in the Expo has become the centre of Ramos and Alvarez’s work.

An auditorium at the unopened CartujaQanat pilot project [Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

The project, named CartujaQanat, is modelled after the Persian qanat system and seeks to cool the ground temperature of a space the size of two soccer fields by 6 to 7 degrees Celcius within La Isla de La Cartuja.

Partially funded by the European Union’s Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) office, this 5-million-euro ($5.1m) project involves a channel 20 metres underground that will carry water – but the purpose is not to transport that water.

Vertical vents along the canal drive the coolness of the water upwards, allowing it to reduce the ground temperature. “The key to the climate control techniques is the day-night cycle,” says Ramos.

During the nighttime, the water underground – about 140 cubic metres [36,984 cubic gallons] – cools off with the naturally low temperatures. Some of the water is pumped up and sent to the roof of the amphitheatre, which is covered in solar panels. Nozzles fan out the water on top of the panels, creating what’s called a “falling film”. This mechanism helps expedite the cooling process by reducing the depth of the water and allowing it to cool faster in the low outdoor temperatures.

During the day, solar-powered pumps push cooled water above ground where it gets funnelled through small pipes and pushed in front of fans that spray the cool air into the ground floor of the amphitheatre. Outside, a separate set of nozzles in small pools of water spray mist into the air, cooling by evaporation.

A pump room at the unopened CartujaQanat pilot project [Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

Other elements help to keep the temperatures down: Vegetation planted on the inside walls cools via transpiration (excess water from leaves evaporates into the air), trees provide shade outside, and the roof is painted a heat-reflecting white.

The creators are hoping the space will become a communal point for university students and people who work at nearby companies. “The project aims to bring life back on the street,” says Ramos. “This will provide climatic refuge while allowing both shelter in the middle of the summer and the possibility of continuing to organise outdoor activities in the hot months.”

Alvarez says that the area should be completed by June, just in time for the summer when Spain experiences its highest temperatures.

The creators are hoping the space will become a communal point for university students and people who work at nearby companies [Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

A cool future

Ramos and Alvarez met more than 30 years ago when Ramos was one of Alvarez’s students at the University of Seville. “He asked good questions,” says Alvarez. “The people that pose interesting problems to me in the classroom are the people who I try to recruit for the future.”

Since then they have been working together to cool down Seville. In the 1990s, they developed wind tunnels along Seville’s avenues, taking inspiration from a Persian wind catcher called a bagdir, a tower with openings at the top that catch the wind and channel it downwards.

Alvarez says that they often look to other countries for solutions, especially those that have been dealing with intense heat for centuries.

For example, modern Moroccan buildings are being designed to include large north-facing windows and smaller south-facing windows that bring in natural light while maximising cooling. Los Angeles in the United States, and Ahmedabad in India, are using a new type of white paint to reflect up to 98.1 percent of sunlight and absorb UV light, which helps to combat urban heat and reduce energy consumption. White reflective paint has been used for centuries in Morocco and Greece, earning one famous city the name “Casablanca” (white house).

“[The Arab world] did it because they needed to … either you move or you die or you find something to cool your buildings. And they found something,” says Alvarez. “[CartujaQanat] is really a tribute to them,” he adds.

The team has already started applying some of their learnings to other parts of Seville.

“Bioclimatic” bus stops, which use a smaller-scale version of the CartujaQanat approach, are being installed in time for summer. Inside the shelter, air that has been cooled by a closed water system is pumped out via tiny holes, powered by solar panels on the roof – similar to a refrigerator,” Sanchez told local newspaper Sur last summer. He and Khaneiki say that they hope to have more citizen participation as the project moves forward

The efforts in Seville are a modern-day reimagining of the systems built thousands of years ago, Khaneiki says. “These are qanats built for modern people by modern people. This is a resurrection of qanats in the new era.”

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Recognition of Palestinian statehood is not the panacea it’s made out to be | United Nations

As the genocide in Gaza rages on, various European countries, including Spain and Ireland, have indicated that they are moving towards recognising the State of Palestine.

The new Irish prime minister, Simon Harris, argued that a group of like-minded countries officially recognising a Palestinian state would “lend weight to the decision and … send the strongest message”.

Meanwhile, Spanish officials argued that this could create momentum for others to do the same. Currently, most countries in the Global South, but only very few in the West, recognise the State of Palestine. As it stands, recognition of the State of Palestine is a political and symbolic move – it signals the recognition of the Palestinian right to sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza. In reality, no such sovereignty exists – rather as an occupying force, the Israeli regime maintains de facto control over both territories and effectively controls everything that goes in and out, including people.

Recently, some moves have also been made towards granting Palestine full membership to the United Nations, and thus recognising its statehood at the UN level. In mid-April, a resolution was put forward at the UN Security Council that would have paved the way for full Palestinian membership. Twelve members of the UNSC voted in favour but, unsurprisingly, the United States blocked the initiative using its veto power. Rather predictably, the United Kingdom and Switzerland abstained. Prior to the vote, the Biden administration offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a meeting at the White House in return for suspending the bid. Abbas declined, probably still stinging from last year when he reportedly accepted a similar offer and never received the invitation to the White House. Indeed, it has been the case many times before that the Palestinian Authority suspended action at the UN at the bequest of the Americans in return for a measly payoff, or no payoff at all.

Some Palestinians and international human rights organisations argue that recognition is a crucial step towards securing Palestinian fundamental rights and one that offers more legal avenues to hold the Israeli regime accountable. Yet it is difficult to envision how recognition of a state that does not exist would change the reality on the ground for Palestinians facing systematic erasure.

In fact, it is pertinent to ask whether some states are pushing for this symbolic political move amid an ongoing genocide to avoid taking much more tangible actions, such as arms/trade embargoes and sanctions on the Israeli regime, to support Palestinians and reaffirm their right to sovereignty.

For example, Spain – one of the leading voices calling for recognition – in November exported $1m worth of ammunition to the Israeli regime, which by that time had already killed thousands in Gaza. Meanwhile, Ireland’s exports of restricted “dual-use” goods that have potential military purposes grew nearly sevenfold in 2023, from 11 million euros ($11.8m) to more than 70 million euros ($75m). Despite growing calls for an end to all trade relations between Ireland and the Israeli regime, these exports continue to this day. It thus begs the question; What does recognition of a people’s statehood mean when you remain complicit in funding, arming and equipping the regime that is destroying the very people of that state?

But for most diplomats and foreign officials, the crux of the recognition argument is that it will revive the “two-state solution” amid what is being framed as a political impasse. A solution which, premised on the partition of the land of historic Palestine, does not recognise Palestinian fundamental rights in their entirety and effectively accepts Israeli apartheid. Indeed the two-state solution demands that Palestinians world over forgo their rights to their lands and properties in historic Palestine and accept a truncated state in the 1967 occupied lands instead. Further, it demands that Palestinians accept Zionism as a legitimate ideology rather than one of settler-colonial domination.

Today, in addition to the genocide in Gaza, which has seen Israeli forces kill more than 34,000 Palestinians and destroy 70 percent of the enclave’s infrastructure, the West Bank is facing unprecedented land theft, settlement building, destruction of homes and violence at the hands of both soldiers and settlers. This reality is a rather predictable outcome of decades of pushing a flawed solution framework which favours colonial partition of justice and freedom.

That’s why what Palestinians need from the international community at this moment is not the symbolic recognition of a non-existing state, but tangible action, including trade embargoes on and sanctions against the Israeli regime to hold it accountable for its ongoing crimes across colonised Palestine.

As the genocide rages on, Gaza continues to teach the world many things, and among them is that the Palestinian people cannot be “siphoned off into Bantustans” and forgotten about. Indeed, partition will never be a sustainable or long-term solution and the international community needs to come to terms with this.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

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Spain’s prime minister halts public duties after wife accused of corruption | News

Sanchez says he will make an announcement on his political future next week.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said he will halt his public duties after a judicial investigation was launched into corruption allegations against his wife.

The Socialist leader said on Wednesday that while the allegations against his wife Begona Gomez were false, he was cancelling his public agenda until Monday, when he will appear before the media to announce his decision on his political future.

“I need to pause and think,” Sanchez wrote in a letter shared on his X account. “I urgently need an answer to the question of whether it is worthwhile… whether I should continue to lead the government or renounce this honour.”

Gomez, 49, does not hold public office and maintains a low political profile. She was accused by Manos Limpias, which describes itself as a union but mainly works as a platform pursuing legal cases, of using her position to influence business deals.

Manos Limpias, which translates as “Clean Hands,” is led by Miguel Bernad Remon, a figure within the far right.

The campaign group used a peculiarity of Spanish law that allows individuals or entities to take part in certain criminal cases even when they haven’t been directly harmed by the accused.

A court based in Madrid will consider the allegations and proceed with the investigation or toss it out. It did not provide further information and said that the probe was under seal.

When asked in parliament after the court’s decision whether he thought the judicial system was working, Sanchez replied: “On a day like today and after hearing the news, despite everything, I still believe in the judicial system of this country.”

Justice Minister Felix Bolanos called the new allegations “false”.

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