Eduardo González
The outbreak of the armed conflict in the Middle East after the terrorist attacks of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas against Israel has become a new chapter in the political pulse that the PP maintains against the coalition government of Pedro Sanchez in the current investiture process.
On the one hand, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, criticized yesterday that Spain has been “excluded” from the joint statement of the US, France, Germany, Italy and the UK on the events in Israel, despite being “presiding over the Union as president in turn”, and called for the acting Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, or “at least the Foreign Minister”, José Manuel Albares, to appear in Congress to report on Spain’s position. “It is true that the government is in office, but we need clarification on what the position is, because looking at the government partners, it is clear that there is a contradiction,” Feijóo told esRadio. Some of Sánchez’s parliamentary partners, he denounced, “have not condemned the terrorist acts of Hamas” and have even “tried to justify it”.
The PP registered yesterday in Congress a request for the appearance of José Manuel Albares in the Plenary of the House (the committees have not yet been constituted) to “expose the assessment of the terrorist attack that Israel has suffered, the situation in which the Spanish are in the region, the lines of action to be taken by the Government in office and how it affects our foreign policy this conflict”.
In the request for appearance, the spokeswoman of the Popular Group, Cuca Gamarra, stated that “the political groups that form part of the acting Government have refused to condemn the terrorist attack, in further proof of the division existing in the acting Government on the main issues of foreign policy”.
Albares, in statements to Europa Press, assured that he has “no objection” to appearing before the Congress of Deputies as the PP has requested to explain the Government’s position and added that, proof of this is that he has carried out a round of contacts with the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups and the first person he called was the PP’s Cuca Gamarra, to whom he said he had “passed on all the information”. He also said that the spokespersons can contact him whenever they need to on his mobile phone.
On the other hand, the PP has proposed to Congress the approval of an institutional declaration of condemnation, “in the strongest terms”, to the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel and in which it “recognizes the right of Israel to defend its territory and its population in accordance with international law”. The proposal was presented at the meeting of the Bureau of the Congress, but for the moment it has not gone ahead because a declaration of the Chamber requires the unanimity of all the parliamentary groups and, for the moment, the parliamentary commissions have not been constituted and a calendar of plenary sessions has not yet been approved. However, the PP will continue to offer the text to all the parliamentary groups in order to seek the necessary unanimity.
In any case, and in view of the possibility that the Board of Spokesmen of the Congress does not consider the appearance of Albares in the Lower House appropriate, the PP has opted to demand the same in the Senate, where it has a majority and, therefore, would have much more chances of getting its initiative through, as explained at a press conference by the first vice-president of the Upper House, Javier Maroto, of the PP. In the event that the request is finally successful in Congress, the request in the Senate would be withdrawn.
Government response
The Executive already responded yesterday strongly to the accusations of the PP. On the one hand, the spokeswoman of the acting Government, Isabel Rodríguez, assured yesterday in the press conference after the Council of Ministers that both Sánchez and Albares have expressed themselves with “absolute rotundity” in relation to these facts and declared that “what would be expected from the leader of the opposition of one of the main parties of our country is that he would be on the side of the Government”. Likewise, he assured that Feijóo was informed about this matter directly by Sánchez during a meeting they both held in the Congress in the framework of the round of contacts prior to the investiture of the socialist candidate.
In the same sense, Albares assured yesterday that all the ministers “are committed to peace in the Middle East” and that within the Executive “there is no equidistance”. “We show our resounding condemnation of what is a terrorist act,” he told SER. “In the heart of the Council of Ministers we are all united without fissures in favor of peace in the Middle East. Shooting indiscriminately against a population is a terrorist act. Hamas is one thing and the Palestinian people are another,” he added in his interview to Antena 3.
Planes to Israel
Likewise, the PP denounced that “the Spanish Government, through the Embassy and Consulate in Israel, has limited itself to providing telephone and consular assistance at the Tel Aviv airport”, while other countries “have already sent air transport to repatriate their fellow citizens”.
On this point, Albares himself announced -in declarations to the SER channel and to Antena 3-that the Government is already organizing an “operation”, in coordination with the Ministry of Defense, to bring to Spain, in a military plane, a hundred Spaniards who are in the area for tourism or business. At the moment there are hundreds of Spaniards blocked in Israel. Iberia and Vueling have cancelled all their flights until Sunday. Subsequently, the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, reported that, finally, two military aircraft – Airbus A330s – have been sent by her department to evacuate some 500 Spaniards who remain in Israel.
