Eduardo González
The Board of Spokespersons of the Congress has accepted the request for appearance presented by the parliamentary groups Euskal Herria Bildu and Republicano so that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, can explain before the Plenary of the Chamber the actions of the Government to confront the “plan of ethnic cleansing in Gaza” proposed by the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
The objective of the request for appearance, presented on February 5 and qualified this week by the Board of Spokespersons, is for Albares to explain “the position of the Government in view of the willingness shown by the United States and Israel (…) to initiate a plan of ethnic cleansing in Gaza to expel its population and occupy and appropriate the Palestinian territory.”
The applicants also ask the minister to explain “the actions and positions that the Government will adopt before the United States and Israel, before the European Union, the international institutions and the international community to confront it.” According to the Europa Press agency, the Board of Spokespersons decided last Tuesday that Albares’ appearance will take place during the Plenary Session on March 12.
On the other hand, the Plurinational Parliamentary Group Sumar has presented a Non-Law Proposal in which it warns that “the recent statements by the President of the United States in his meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have confirmed and amplified the initial intentions of the Trump administration to produce an ethnic cleansing of a scale unknown since the end of World War II.”
“Ethnic cleansing would be the corollary of the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli Army in the Gaza Strip and which has resulted in the death of more than 50,000 people, of which two thirds have been women and children; more than 150,000 people injured or missing and the destruction of civil and housing infrastructure in that territory,” adds the text, presented on February 5 by the MPs Agustín Santos Maraver (former Spanish ambassador to the UN), Enrique Santiago, Gerardo Pisarello Prados and Teslem Andala Ubbi for debate in the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“The proposals of the Trump administration make the victims of genocide responsible for their situation and impose a double punishment on them by expelling them, additionally, from a territory that belongs to them,” it continues. “The breach of International Law that the Trump presidency proposes is unprecedented and is an omen of the structural risks that a management based on ignorance, the law of the strongest and arrogance will have for global security,” warns the formation led by Vice President Yolanda Díaz.
For all these reasons, Sumar (minority partner in the coalition government) urges the government to “strongly reject the statements of the President of the United States regarding the future of Gaza” and to “promote a declaration of frontal rejection of the pretensions of the Trump presidency regarding Gaza within the European Union”.
