The PP believed that the brutal terrorist attack by Hamas in Israeli territory and the subsequent and excessive reaction of the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu could serve its cause against the coalition Government, especially after the modest scope of the demonstrations against the amnesty called in Madrid and Barcelona. There was restlessness in the Executive, but in a very few hours the positions were aligned in a fork of nuances less wide than the people would have liked. Nothing to do with the riot that caused the invasion of Ukraine. Because the place is different, and the time, too.
The leader of Podemos and acting minister, Ione Belarra, just yesterday promoted the sitting of Prime Minister Netanyahu at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity with the same naturalness with which she qualified the action of Hamas in Israeli territory as terrorist.
The ghost of the war in Ukraine – when reasons of internal tactics made Podemos behave like an old anti-NATO party in the hope of narrowing Yolanda Díaz’s room for maneuver and inciting UP’s bases against Alberto Garzón – hovered over the coalition Government for a few hours, but two things happened quickly: on the one hand, that the distance between PSOE, Sumar, Podemos and the rest of the progressive forces, unlike what we have seen in other European countries, it was obvious but nuanced; on the other hand, that Spain, due to a unique combination of old Catholic-conservative anti-Semitism, medieval soca-rel and the historical commitment of all the left to the Palestinian cause, is a country more inclined to defend the rights of the Palestinian people than to bless the legitimacy of Israel’s war actions.
The fact that, in addition, the PP went overboard again wanting to identify the Executive of Pedro Sánchez with the terrorist organization Hamas, in terms similar to those in which the president of Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso tried to make Sánchez an accomplice of ETA promoting the slogan “que te vote Txapote” in May, helped the popular offensive, which sought to crack the coalition by underlining its apparent contradictions, derailed on the second day.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, as a representative of the Spanish Government, was one of the first to stand up when the Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement of the EU, Olivér Várhelyi – who took up the position at the proposal of the Prime Minister Hungarian far-right Viktor Orbán announced the end of EU humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.
Since then, the official position of the Spanish Executive has been to condemn the attack by Hamas, but at the same time frown upon Israel’s revenge offensive. This has made it easier for the different pro-Palestinian positions within the Spanish Government to be interpreted within the general framework of a country with a public opinion that has always been sensitive to the suffering of the Palestinians.
Sumar’s spokesman, Ernest Urtasun, condemned on the first day the attack by Hamas against the Israeli civilian population, while expressing his solidarity with the Palestinian people. With more emphasis, Belarra has supported the Palestinian cause and denounced Israel for crimes against humanity, but the difference in accents between Podemos, Sumar and PSOE has not turned into a fissure. In part, because even the European People’s Party, through the mouth of Manfred Weber -located in the EPP far to the right of the positions of the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen-, has maintained a much more nuanced position than the of the Spanish PP. Weber issued a statement condemning the terrorist attack by Hamas and recognizing Israel’s right to self-defense, but immediately added that the Palestinian civilian population cannot pay for the crimes of Hamas. The title of Weber’s message was eloquent: “Hamas must pay, not Gaza.”
