The Diplomat
The ultimatum launched by Israel to evacuate the Gaza Strip has mobilized the different sensibilities of Pedro Sánchez’s coalition government. On the one hand, the Podemos and Sumar parties have urged Spain and the EU to put pressure on Israel to prevent a “massacre” and, on the other hand, the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, is in contact with other European colleagues for an eventual evacuation of the nearly 120 Spaniards who remain in the territory.
The Ministry of Defense and the Israeli Army have given a deadline of 24 hours to evacuate 1.1 million Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip, controlled by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
Through her account on the social network X, the leader of Sumar and acting vice president of the government, Yolanda Díaz, warned yesterday that “the international community can not look the other way to the situation in Gaza” and said that Spain and the EU “must mobilize for peace urgently” and “demand” Israel to stop its plans, “which are causing a massacre” in the Gaza Strip”.
Likewise, the Secretary General of Podemos and acting Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, declared that the Gaza Strip is, “for a long time”, an “open-air prison” and warned that “Israel knows very well that there is nowhere to go. It is going to be a massacre foretold”. Therefore, she said, “the EU can and must play a key and autonomous role in the search for a stable and lasting peace”.
For his part, Sumar spokesman Ernest Urtasun warned that the 24-hour deadline given by Israel represents an “absolutely impossible collective punishment.” “Asking a million people to evacuate in 24 hours in a place where there is no fuel, no vehicles, no road infrastructure, is inadmissible,” he continued.
Urtasun also asked the PP not to use the tragedy of Gaza to “whip up” the political debate in Spain and not to give any moral lesson to his party on human rights (after the Popular Party accused Sumar of lack of firmness regarding the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel) because that same formation, during the presidency of José María Aznar, got Spain into an “illegal war” in Iraq. “It is true that I used the expression war crime because it is codified in International Law and because a war crime can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court, an act of terrorism is not codified in International Law”, he added.
Meanwhile, diplomatic sources indicated yesterday that Albares is in contact with other European counterparts and with international organizations present in the Gaza Strip to coordinate the possible evacuation of the Spaniards who are in this territory. No operation is planned for the moment. Apart from the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Israel has kept the border crossings closed since the Hamas attack and Egypt has also closed the Rafah crossing.
In this regard, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, informed yesterday that about 120 Spaniards live in the Gaza Strip and assured that “the Armed Forces will always be ready” to carry out evacuations, after the recent dispatch of two planes to Israel to repatriate Spanish citizens.
