Ben Pawlowski
ISRAEL summoned the Spanish ambassador to a meeting on Thursday after prime minister Pedro Sanchez called the country a ‘genocidal state’ while speaking in congress.
When questioned during a parliamentary session on Wednesday by Gabriel Rufian, an MP for the far-left Republican Left of Catalonia party, about what his government was going to do about ‘trading with a genocidal state like Israel’, Sanchez responded: “We do not do business with a genocidal state.”
Although Sanchez did not explicitly refer to the State of Israel, the comments nevertheless provoked widespread anger, resulting in the Israeli foreign ministry handing the Spanish ambassador, Ana Maria Salomon Perez, a formal reprimand.
“Following the severe remarks made by Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish ambassador to Israel has been summoned for a reprimand meeting at the foreign ministry in Jerusalem,” the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
Sanchez’s comments came just days after he was accused by parliamentary partners of being ‘complicit in genocide’ after new data revealed that Spain had sold €5.3 million of arms to Israel since October 7, 2023.
Amnesty International and a United Nations Special Committee are among a host of human rights organisations to have accused Israel of committing a genocide in Gaza following the October 7 attacks when over 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, over 52,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, as Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched an intensive bombing campaign and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Sanchez’s comments on Wednesday signal the latest stage of an increasingly strained relationship between his socialist government and Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister of Israel.
In May 2024, Spain joined forces with Ireland and Norway to hand formal diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian Authority in a move which Sanchez labelled as ‘historic’ and insisted would ‘contribute to the achievement of peace between Israelis and Palestinians’.
“Recognising the state of Palestine is not only a matter of historical justice, it is a necessity to achieve peace,” Sanchez said during a televised address from La Moncloa at the time.
After the Spanish premier formally recognised Palestine as a nation state, then-foreign minister and current Israeli defence minister Israel Katz took to social media to accuse Sanchez and his deputy Yolanda Diaz of being ‘accomplices in inciting the murder of the Jewish people’.
Diaz, the former leader of far-left Sumar, had described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a ‘real genocide’.
