Eduardo González
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has resorted to its usual arguments on the Middle East conflict to respond to a parliamentary question from former minister Ione Belarra and other Podemos MPs regarding the arms trade with Israel.
The parliamentary question was registered on November 27 by the then MPs of the SUMAR Plurinational Parliamentary Group Ione Belarra, Javier Sánchez Serna, Noemi Santana, Martina Velarde and Lilith Verstrynge, just a week before all of them moved to the Mixed Group after breaking their ties politicians with the formation of the second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz. In fact, Belarra had stopped being acting Minister of Social Rights a few days before registering the question, still as a member of the SUMAR Group.
In the text, the five MPs recalled some words by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, spoken on November 23 during his meeting in Jerusalem with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu: “The whole world is impressed by the images that we see in Gaza. The number of Palestinians killed is truly unbearable.”
Despite this, the parliamentary question continues, “we have learned that the Ministry of Defense is finalizing the acquisition of 1,680 Spike LR2 missiles for almost 290 million euros from a subsidiary of the Israeli arms company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.”
“Following the words of Pedro Sánchez, does the Government of Spain value the suspension of the purchase of weapons material from Israel? “Does the Government consider it coherent to denounce the bombings of the civilian population of Gaza while collaborating economically with the Israeli military-industrial complex that makes them possible?” the text concludes.
In its response, which arrived on January 29, more than two months late, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs limits itself to recalling that “the position of the President of the Government regarding the situation that is currently occurring in Gaza has been clear and public on countless occasions, in which the establishment of an immediate ceasefire and the need to allow access to humanitarian aid in a sustained manner and in the quantities necessary to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population has been expressed. ”
“Likewise, the president firmly condemns the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, and has expressed his solidarity with all the victims, as well as demanding the immediate and unconditional release of all the hostages,” the response concludes. without making any allusion to the main issue of the question: the arms trade with Israel.
Arms sales to Israel
The question from Belarra and the other MPs referred to the import of weapons from Israel. Regarding the export of weapons to this country, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (including its head, José Manuel Albares) has repeatedly assured the media, over the last few days, that, “from the same on October 7, 2023”, there has been “no operation” to sell weapons to this country.
However, data from DataComex, the foreign trade portal of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, indicates (as revealed by ‘eldiario.es’) that, since October 7, the day of the Hamas and Israel attacks that caused the current offensive of the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, Spain has exported weapons to Israel worth 987,000 euros, specifically “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles, cartridges and other ammunition and projectiles, and their parts, including slugs , shot and wads for cartridges.”
As a result of this information, SUMAR spokesperson and Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has demanded that Foreign Affairs cancel “immediately” any license to sell weapons to Israel and that a total embargo be imposed on these exports. For his part, the Minister of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030, Pablo Bustinduy (also from SUMAR), has described the sale of Israeli weapons as “unacceptable and contrary to the Government’s position” and has called for the breaking of “any military, economic and commercial link” with Netanyahu to “end the genocide” in the Gaza Strip.
