Luis Ayllón
The war between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has once again highlighted the differences within the Pedro Sánchez Government. Yesterday, the Minister of Social Affairs and leader of Unidas Podemos, Ione Belarra, demanded that the Government take Israel to the International Criminal Court for war crimes, while the president condemned the Hamas attack against Israel and this country’s right to defend themselves “within International Humanitarian Law.”
During a PSOE rally in Mérida, Sánchez did not hesitate to express his condemnation “strongly and without any ambiguity” of the “terrorist attack” by Hamas, last Saturday, the 7th.
In addition, he demanded the “urgent” release of the “Israeli hostages and captives” held by the Islamist movement, and supported Israel’s “right” to “defend itself”, clarifying that it must do so “within international humanitarian law”, which which, in his opinion, “does not endorse” the evacuation ultimatum to the Gaza Strip given by the Israeli authorities.
Afterwards, he insisted on the position that his Government has maintained of considering that the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict involves recognizing Palestine as a State, despite the fact that since he arrived at La Moncloa he has not taken any steps in that direction.
Even so, Sánchez affirmed that the conflict “will only be resolved when, as the United Nations and also the Cortes Generales say, the two States, Israel and Palestine, are recognized so that they can coexist in peace and security.” In November 2014, all the parliamentary groups of the Congress of Deputies signed an agreement to urge the Government to recognize the Palestinian State, but linking this movement to “a negotiation process” between Israelis and Palestinians.
But, while the position of the socialist part of the Government has been, since the attack on Israel, to repudiate the action of Hamas, the communist sector of the Executive, formed by Podemos and Izquierda Unida, has maintained a very different position. Far from condemning the attack, they have focused their criticism on Israel.
Yesterday, Ione Belarra published a video in which she urges the Government to denounce Israel before the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court for “war crimes committed in Palestine by Netanyahu, as was recently done in the case of the Spanish aid worker murdered in the war in Ukraine, as well as those perpetrated by Hamas in Israel and the occupied territories against the civilian population.
In her speech, the minister and general secretary of Podemos attacks the European Union and the United States, whom she accuses of “encouraging” Israel in “its policy of apartheid and occupation that seriously violates human rights” and of being complicit in a “war criminal like Netanyahu.”
Belarra considers that “using the terrible murders of Israeli civilians by Palestinian armed factions as an excuse to justify Israel’s crimes and the masquerade in Gaza is absolutely unacceptable.”
The minister, who affirms that Israel is committing “a planned genocide in the Gaza Strip,” urgently demands the establishment of humanitarian corridors that allow the exit of civilians and the entry of humanitarian aid.
Finally, she encourages the citizens of our country and other European countries to take to the streets to protest against Israel.
Another of Sánchez’s partners in the Government, Izquierda Unida, a coalition of which his Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, is a part, has sent a letter to the head of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, in which he asks that Spain lead in the EU “a position that condemns the Israeli attacks, guarantees humanitarian aid and supports the freedom of the Palestinian people.” In addition, the letter demands that “your ministry must categorically and immediately condemn this situation, call for a ceasefire and take all measures at your disposal to ensure this.”
