The PP avoids commenting on Netanyahu’s veto of the Palm Sunday Mass | Spain

The PP remains alone on the right and avoids speaking out on Israel’s decision to leave Jerusalem. A decision made by the Hebrew Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after receiving numerous criticisms from international leaders just as the first month of the Iran war and its extension to the Middle East has passed. The main opposition party has not wanted to take a position on the veto and has limited itself to attacking Pedro Sánchez, who this Sunday denounced the “unjustified attack on religious freedom” and demanded that Tel Aviv respect “the diversity of faiths and international law.” “Netanyahu has prevented Catholics from celebrating Palm Sunday in the Holy Places of Jerusalem. Without any explanation. Without reasons or motives,” the president lamented in a message on social networks at 6:12 p.m. in which he emphasized that “without tolerance it is impossible to live together.” At 9:43 p.m., Vox joined in and stated that “it must be clear that Christians maintain their religious freedom intact and that their security is ensured despite the Islamist attacks.” The Popular Party remained silent until noon this Monday, when it had to respond to journalists at a press conference.

“We have a President of the Government who does not congratulate Christmas, he does congratulate Ramadan, in his tweet yesterday he was looking for redemption,” said the PP spokesperson in the Senate, Alicia García. “Because Easter Week, with the parade of Ábalos and all the others in the Courts, is going to become a week of penance,” García laconically stressed, who did not want to continue answering another question on the issue so that he could specify Génova’s own opinion. “I have already answered,” he stated. PP parliamentary sources also add that after Netanyahu’s rectification it is no longer necessary to elaborate on the issue.

The lack of definition of the PP contrasts with the criticism of Vox, which hours after Sánchez urged the Israeli Executive to “explain and correct what happened” in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. “We can understand that the situation is very complicated in Jerusalem with the closure of sacred places of the three religions, but it must be clear that Christians maintain their religious freedom intact and that their security is ensured despite the Islamist attacks,” added the far-right party in X.

The right thus distances itself on this matter. Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the members of his leadership have put themselves in profile despite the fact that the PP identifies itself in its presentation as a “center-reformist” party that aspires to be the common home of liberals, Christian Democrats and conservatives to represent all those who defend liberal democracy, the social market economy, freedom, the rule of law, equality before the law and the dignity of all human life, as essential values of the West, and a strong European Union and Spain, as a sovereign nation, united and plural, to whose future they want to contribute.”

Of course, the spokesperson in the PP Congress, Ester Muñoz, recalled a recent vote in the lower house promoted by her party “in defense of persecuted Christians.” “March 18, 2026. ‘Then Jesus said to him: Judas, with a kiss do you hand over the Son of Man?’. Anything goes for him to sow more hatred. He does not defend Christians or Christianity, he uses us to engage in politics,” Muñoz noted in X.

Rectification

For his part, the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, has celebrated Israel’s “rectification” after its “unacceptable” decision to prevent the Palm Sunday mass from being celebrated in the Holy Sepulchre. The Foreign Ministry has summoned Israel’s chargé d’affaires to officially convey Spain’s protest and Bolaños has denounced what he has called a “new violation of international law” and religious freedom. “We consider it unacceptable that there is a violation of the right of Catholics to celebrate a mass that had been celebrated every year in the same place,” the minister stressed. Israel’s justification is that it vetoed the celebration for “security” reasons, preventing access to the Holy Sepulcher of the Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the highest Catholic authority in the Holy Land.

“Netanyahu has been left so alone that he has had to rectify. Not allowing this celebration, one of the most important days of Christianity, has left him in a position that is difficult to maintain even for himself. The position of the Socialist Party is clear. We believe in religious freedom, we believe in freedom of confession. We believe that this respect and that plurality is what makes us better as a society. And therefore any impediment to this freedom of worship is an attack that cannot be condoned,” he noted. Enma López, deputy spokesperson for the federal leadership of the PSOE.