Spanish and Belgian conservatives have lambasted their left-wing-liberal governments for criticising Israel and being apologists of the Palestinian terrorist organisation Hamas.
Secretary General of Spanish party VOX Ignacio Garriga said on Monday, November 27th, that Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez “will go down in history” as an ally of Hamas. This comes after a diplomatic spat between Israel and Spain.
Israel summoned Spain and Belgium’s ambassadors in Tel Aviv on Monday after their country’s prime ministers on Friday called Israel’s actions in Gaza “unacceptable.” Visiting the Rafah crossing—serving as a humanitarian corridor—on the border of Egypt and Hamas-controlled Gaza last week, Sánchez said Israel’s “indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians, including thousands of children, is completely unacceptable.” He also said Spain is open to recognising a Palestinian state, even “if the European Union does not.”
Israel has been waging a war against Hamas in Gaza after the terrorist group massacred 1,200 civilians in Israel on October 7th and abducted 240 innocent people. A temporary pause that came into effect on Friday has been extended until this Thursday, and countries like Spain, Portugal, and Belgium, as well as EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, have been pressuring Israel for a lasting ceasefire, while condemning the country, for—as Belgian liberal Prime Minister Alexander De Croo stated—not following “international humanitarian law.”
Gaza’s Hamas-run health authorities have made the unverified claim that more than 15,000 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment. Israel repeatedly warns civilians about upcoming strikes on Hamas infrastructure and has accused the group of using civilians as human shields, which was verified in the case of the Al-Shifa hospital. In a sign of what still awaits Israel in the long term, a Palestinian prisoner who was released by Israel over the weekend as part of the Israel-Hamas hostage transfer deal was caught on video chanting in support of Hamas and their violence against Israelis.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been adamant that once the temporary pause ends and Israeli hostages have been freed, “we will return with full force to achieve our goals: the elimination of Hamas.”
Netanyahu condemned Sánchez and De Croo, saying they “did not place total responsibility on Hamas for the crimes against humanity it perpetrated: massacring Israeli citizens and using Palestinians as human shields.” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said their statements were in “support of terrorism.” After Spain’s ambassador was summoned for a reprimand, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares summoned Israel’s ambassador to Spain.
A meeting in Barcelona on Monday, attended by leaders of European and Arab countries, was also seen as a sign of hostility by Israel. At the forum, Portuguese Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho called for a permanent ceasefire, saying “Israel will surely recognise that its security and long-term interests lie in contributing to a two-state solution.” The Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, but not Gaza, was represented in Barcelona, but Israel boycotted the meeting, with its EU ambassador, Haim Regev, saying it risked being just “another international forum in which Arab states bash Israel.”
Ignacio Garriga of VOX also blasted Pedro Sánchez for wanting to “destroy” Spain’s international image, saying that his foreign policy “is based on confronting allied countries and reaching out to Islamist countries.”
In what is seen as “shameful” and “embarrassing” by conservative parties, Hamas praised both Sánchez and De Croo for their stance on the Middle East conflict. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the centre-right Partido Popular (PP) said Sánchez is the only European leader capable of being “applauded simultaneously” by Hamas, and separatist Catalan and Basque parties.
Meanwhile, in Belgium, former Secretary of State for Migration, conservative MP Theo Francken, criticised his prime minister for asking Israel to stop fighting. From the perspective of Israel’s right to self-defence, that “constitutes no less than a diplomatic declaration of war. After all, the Israeli offensive has not yet achieved its goal,” he tweeted. He added: “At present, there is no evidence of the intentional killing of Gaza civilians,” but “Hamas is a terrorist organisation that does not want a solution at all, but only wants the destruction and dissolution of the State of Israel with Sharia law as its basis and the Ayatollah regime of Iran as its final boss.”
