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Spain Must Sever Ties With Israel for 2025 Budget to Pass, Far-Left Party Warns Government
Ione Belarra, secretary general of the Spanish far-left party Podemos, has accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. Photo: Reuters/David Canales
A far-left political party in Spain has threatened to withhold its crucial support for next year’s budget unless the government breaks diplomatic relations with Israel among other actions, marking the latest effort by Madrid to isolate the Jewish state over the past year.
Ione Belarra, who served as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s social rights minister between 2021 and 2023 but is no longer in the governing coalition, is now secretary general of the Spanish hard-left party Podemos (“We Can”).
Sanchez’s socialist-led government, which relies on a coalition of smaller parties to approve legislation, needs the votes of the four Podemos lawmakers in the lower house for the budget to pass.
However, Sanchez also requires support from some center-right parties that will have their own conditions to back the budget, creating a tough balancing act for the Spanish premier.
On Monday, Belarra said in a video message that her party would only support next year’s budget if the government “immediately breaks off diplomatic and trade relations with the genocidal state of Israel.” Her second condition was for Madrid to “tackle the housing crisis by lowering rents by 40 percent by law, banning the purchase of houses by anyone who’s not going to live in them, and dismantling squadron commandos,” a reference to private companies that mediate in squatting situations to evict occupants.
On Tuesday, Belarra added in a tweet: “Breaking relations with Israel and lowering rent prices by law is the minimum that can be demanded of a self-proclaimed progressive government. We need all your support to twist the [government’s] arm.”
Senior Podemos official Javier Sánchez Serna echoed the same point on Tuesday, saying, “Pedro Sánchez’s government has been veering to the right for months and it’s going to get worse if someone doesn’t stand up. If the [government] wants to pass the 2025 budget, it will have to meet the two conditions proposed by Podemos: break relations with Israel and intervene in housing.”
Such statements from Belarra are not new. Less than three weeks after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel last year, she posted a video on X/Twitter calling on European Union (EU) nations to sever diplomatic ties with Israel and comparing Jerusalem’s defensive war against Hamas with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She also demanded stiff economic sanctions against the Jewish state and the prosecution of its leaders for “war crimes.”
However, while her criticisms of Israel have become standard rhetoric for the Spanish politician, her latest efforts to hold the government budget hostage mark an escalation in her campaign to nosedive Spain-Israel relations.
Podemos on Tuesday began voting on whether to make its support for this year’s budget conditional on the government severing ties with Israel and implementing measures to curb rent prices by 40 percent. The internal vote, whose result is binding, will end on Sunday.
Despite Belarra and Podemos’s criticisms of the government, Spain under Sanchez has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel since Oct. 7 of last year, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza. The terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and abducted over 250 hostages in their rampage, leading Israel to respond with a military campaign aimed at freeing those taken captive and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.
Earlier this month, Sanchez urged other members of the EU to suspend the bloc’s free trade agreement with Israel over its military campaigns against Hamas in Gaza and the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Sanchez’s demand came three days after the Spanish premier urged other countries to stop supplying weapons to the Jewish state.
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, Spain launched a diplomatic campaign to curb Israel’s military response. At the same time, several Spanish ministers in the country’s left-wing coalition government issued pro-Hamas statements and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, with Belarra falsely accusing Israel of “genocide.”
More recently, Spanish officials said they would not allow ships carrying arms for Israel to stop at its ports
In May, Spain officially recognized a Palestinian state, claiming the move was accelerated by the Israel-Hamas war and would help foster a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli officials described the decision as a “reward for terrorism.”
Spain, like many other countries around the world, experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents targeting the Jewish community following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
Two weeks after the onslaught, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) warned of “the greatest escalation of antisemitism in Spain in recent times.” A statement from the FCJE on the upsurge in antisemitism highlighted the statements of Belarra, who at the time was Spain’s social rights minister and had already accused Israel of “genocide.”
“The demonstrations against Israel, the burning of Israeli flags, the proclamations calling Israel a murderer, genocidal, and the author of a planned ethnic cleansing, as Minister Ione Belarra has reiterated on several occasions, have inflamed [the situation],” the FCJE observed.
After attending a pro-Hamas demonstration in Madrid exactly two weeks after the Hamas atrocities, before Israel launched its ground campaign in Gaza, Belarra tweeted, “Dignity has filled the streets of Madrid, [which] today urged the end of the genocide that Israel is planning against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. Freedom for Palestine.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
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