The Diplomat
The Catalan Parliament’s Committee on External Action, Transparency and Cooperation yesterday approved a motion for a resolution stating that Israel’s regime in Palestine can be considered a crime of ‘apartheid’.
The resolution, the first of its kind to be passed by a parliament within the European Union, was tabled by the pro-independence ERC, the CUP and the Comuns and, after a series of amendments, was supported by the Catalan socialists of the PSC.
The pro-independence majority was divided when it came to qualifying Israel’s actions towards the Palestinian population in the West Bank, as Junts per Catalunya voted against. Vox and Ciudadanos abstained.
In any case, the initiative went ahead, which provoked the reaction of Israel’s ambassador to Spain, Rodica Radian-Gordon, who on her Twitter account “strongly” condemned what she described as a “shameful resolution” by the Parliament’s Foreign Action Committee.
The ambassador considered the resolution to be “the fruit of the anti-Israel obsession of those who promoted and approved it”.
The proposal “publicly recognises that the system applied by Israel in the occupied territories is contrary to international law and, according to the definition contained in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, can be considered a crime of ‘apartheid'”.
It also asks the Govern to use all the tools within its competence to ensure that the Israeli authorities implement the recommendations of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and to ask the central government “not to provide aid or assistance likely to contribute to maintaining this situation”.
The Israeli government showed a somewhat ambiguous attitude when the independence crisis broke out in Catalonia in autumn 2017, since, despite the requests made by Mariano Rajoy’s government, it did not expressly condemn the secessionist attempts as other countries did. Only during his state visit to Spain in November of that year did President Reuven Rivlin say a few words defending the unity of Spain.
For the pro-independence supporters, the Jewish people and Israel have always stood for national self-determination and have tried to maintain close relations with that country, so the initiative has caused some surprise.
