Israel will stop the Spanish embassy from providing consular services to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Friday.

The move follows Spain’s decision to recognise Palestine as a state earlier this week, and comments made by the country’s deputy prime minister, who said “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

“Following Spain’s recognition of a Palestinian state and the Spanish deputy prime minister’s antisemitic call... I have decided to... prohibit the Spanish embassy from providing services to Palestinians from Judea and Samaria,” the foreign minister wrote on Friday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, using the Biblical name for the occupied territory.

“If this ignorant, hate-filled individual wants to understand what radical Islam truly seeks, she should study the 700 years of Islamic rule in Al-Andalus – today’s Spain,” Katz added.

📸 A group of Israeli left-wing activists gathered outside the US consulate in West Jerusalem to stage a peaceful protest against the ongoing war in Gaza. Israeli security forces were later seen forcefully dispersing the demonstration.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, the Biden administration has thrown its full diplomatic weight behind Israel while also speeding up arms shipments to the country as it began to prepare for a ground invasion of the enclave.

Over the past eight months, legal experts, rights groups, and Palestinians have all criticised the Biden administration’s material support for Israel’s war effort.

The support continued to flow to Israel despite documented cases in which Israeli forces targeted schools and residential buildings and laid siege to hospitals. So far, more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.