The PP's doubts threaten the 2014 parliamentary consensus on Palestine

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, is determined to recognize Palestine as a State before the summer and to promote a solution to the conflict with Israel at the international level, both before the United Nations and in the European Union. But this position does not currently have the practically unanimous support that the previous initiative on this matter garnered, which was debated in Congress in 2014, during the Government of Mariano Rajoy. The PP doubts that the current situation, with Israel's war in Gaza, is the best to take this step, and complains that the Executive does not inform it. The Government does, however, have the enthusiastic support of its usual partners in Congress (Sumar, Podemos, Compromís, EH Bildu, ERC, PNV and the BNG), who even push it to act “more courageously” against the first Israeli Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Pedro Sánchez has taken advantage of his recent tour of several Arab countries to warn that he plans to accelerate the recognition of the Palestinian State. He will do it, said he, before the summer; that is, around the European elections of June 9. The president also told journalists that there will be more movements on the matter shortly: “We must be attentive to the decisions that will be taken soon in Brussels and New York,” he said, alluding to the role he wants to play both in the EU and in United Nations.

The Executive has not yet specified what formula it wants to propose this proposal for recognition of the Palestinian State. In principle, La Moncloa favors it being a decision of the Council of Ministers and that the president go to the Chamber to report it. The matter has already been brought to Parliament several times and, on the last occasion, in November 2014, Congress put forward a non-legal proposal, agreed between the PP and the PSOE, which urged the Government to make this gesture towards Palestine. . It obtained almost unanimous support: 322 votes cast, 319 yeses, one abstention and two noes.

In that non-binding vote, two PP deputies who are now still in the lower house already showed their discomfort with the proposal. Agustín Conde from Toledo voted against and Ricardo Tarno from Seville abstained. The current leadership of the PP has not yet made a public statement, among other reasons, because it has more than doubts about “the opportunity of this initiative in these times of war in the area,” according to sources from Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party.

The PP, to begin with, complains that it does not have any direct information about President Sánchez's plan. There have been no contacts from either La Moncloa or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, these sources regret. They emphasize that this behavior is not new and that, before giving their support to a resolution of such international significance at such a critical moment, they would like to know such specific aspects as what type of democracy the Palestinian State would be and how and when elections would be called. . Also other non-minor details such as where the borders between Palestine and Israel would be located (before or after those established in the Green Line after the Six Day War of 1967), who would issue the mandatory passports, what would be the capital (Jerusalem, Rafah or Ramallah) and the implications that that decision would entail.

In an even harsher position, former popular president José María Aznar expressed himself this Thursday: “Those who defend the creation of a Palestinian State, which State are they referring to? That does not exist,” he said in a session of his Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies (FAES). And he added: “Recognizing what does not exist is absurd.”

In Feijóo's PP they admit that in Spanish society the support for this two-state solution – Israel and Palestine – is very broad and they have confirmed this again in recent demonstrations attended by their representatives in Madrid: the one called by Only two hundred people attended Israel in front of the Congress, and those in favor of Palestine normally attend thousands. Sources from the PP's international team agree that this two-state solution is “the only possible solution,” but they consider that, for it to prosper, there must be a situation of greater stability in the area, and not war. They also demand that other EU partners endorse this initiative, not only the three that currently share Spain's position (Ireland, Slovenia and Malta). Finally, they expect more involvement from Arab countries that resist recognizing Israel, something that Sánchez himself has also tried on his recent tour of the Middle East.

Feijóo is waiting to gather more information from his experts to make a first public statement but, for now, he does miss that in the face of a matter “so serious, of such importance and extremely serious from a humanitarian point of view” no one from the Government has called him to agree on the measure, say sources close to him. And they remember how the similar proposal of November 2014 was forged.

The then Foreign Minister, the popular José Manuel García Margallo, negotiated on that occasion the text of the resolution with his PSOE predecessor, Trinidad Jiménez, and in the debate in Congress there were, above all, words of consensus. Margallo expressed the Government's “hope that the historic session” would serve to “unblock a negotiation process that has been stuck for many years.” And he pledged that Spain, as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, would promote “a dialogue for peace, security and the development of a region that has been suffering for a long time.” Trinidad Jiménez highlighted: “The recognition of the Palestinian State is the best resolution to promote peace, through a resolution that does not go with anyone or against anyone.”

The non-legal (non-binding) proposal finally approved urged the Government to “recognize [a] Palestine as a State, subject of International Law, reaffirming the conviction that the only possible solution to the conflict is the coexistence of two States, Israel and Palestine.” And he added: “This recognition must be a consequence of a negotiation process between the parties that guarantees peace and security for both, respect for the rights of citizens and regional stability.”

The then President Rajoy's team also remembers how the reception and official lunch was set up at the Royal Palace, in November 2017 and with the presence of the Kings, for the Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas. It was in the columned hall, the same place where the Middle East Peace Conference had been inaugurated 26 years earlier. And it was there that Abbas expressed, in the midst of the Catalan independence crisis, his “firm stance in support of the unity of the people and territory of Spain.”

In the current Congress, if a vote on the matter were promoted, the PSOE would have a large majority of votes for its initiative to prosper, although predictably without the unanimity of then. This same week, spokespersons for Sumar, Podemos, Compromís and other groups even maintained that the Government was late with this proposal and that it could be being braver. The representative of Podemos, Javier Sánchez Serna, reproached Sánchez for taking so long and for not daring to take the Israeli prime minister to the International Criminal Court “for genocide.”

_