Israel has summoned the Spanish ambassador to the country, Ana María Salomón Pérez, to a meeting this Thursday to admonish her for statements by the President of the Government during the Congress control session on Wednesday, for which Israel has felt alluded to but in which Sanchez has not mentioned her name.
“After the harsh statements of the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish ambassador to Israel has been summoned to an admonition meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem tomorrow [por este jueves]”A spokesman for this department told the EFE agency.
Several Israeli newspapers ensure that this call has been motivated by a response from the president to a question by ERC deputy, Gabriel Rufián. During his speech, Rufián had said that the government “trades with a genocidal state, such as Israel.” Minutes later, without citing the country, Sánchez has answered. “I point out one thing. We do not trade with a genocidal state. We do not.”
The president then pointed out “the other day from this tribune, I specifically specified what we were talking about when talking about some things that do not fit the truth,” said Sánchez.
The president alluded to the session on May 7 in Congress in which the Parliamentary Members of the Government reproached Sánchez to be “accomplice of a genocide” committed by Israel in Gaza, after a report from the center of Delàs revealed that Spain had sold weapons to that country worth more than five million euros since October 7, 2023 The Israeli army offensive on Gaza in which 52,900 Palestinians have already died, most women and children.
Pedro Sánchez’s response to these accusations was to ensure that those information, repetitions and erroneous interpretations. ”
A tense relationship
Pedro Sánchez’s relationship with the Government of Benjamín Netanyahu, considered the most right -wing in the history of Israel, has been especially tense since the beginning of the Israeli offensive in Gaza. This tension was already felt during the first and only visit of the president of the Government to Israel after the beginning of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, in November 2023, when Sánchez said before Netanyahu that the “whole world was impressed by the images we see daily in Gaza. The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza is really unbearable.”
The discomfort caused by the Israeli executive by these statements was the starting point of a crisis that has been reflected in successive disagreements and that has had as one of its milestones the recognition of Spain of the State of Palestine, in May 2024, and the prohibition to the Spanish consulate in Jerusalem to provide services to the Palestinians, under explicit closing threat. A month later, Spain formally joined Israel for genocide in the UN International Court of Justice.
Another episode of tension happened following videos and images created by artificial intelligence, parodying Spain and members of the Government, including Sanchez himself, disseminated in social networks from the official account of the then Foreign Minister and now Minister of Defense, Israel Katz. In the images, flamenco dance with images of Palestinian militiamen in a statement released days later, Katz accused the existence of the state of Israel. ”
Also just one year ago, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, became the first socialist member of the government to qualify “what is happening in Gaza” of “authentic genocide.” Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, avoided hours later to use the same expression and just replied that it will be the international justice that dictates if Israel is committing it. “There is a demand for South Africa [en el Tribunal Internacional de Justicia de La Haya] to analyze and elucidate exactly that, ”he said.
