Dressed in black togas, a group of professionals gathered this Tuesday before the Congress of Deputies to demand that the Government of Spain and the Cortes Generales comply with international treaties in the face of the serious violation of human rights and international law in Palestine. . “We are fighting for a just cause, which is the rule of law,” claimed Pilar Barrado, magistrate and spokesperson for the Jurists for Palestine platform, which has already collected 1,200 signatures from professionals from all branches of law throughout Spain.
“Human rights are universal. There cannot be a world of masters and slaves who are allowed to be massacred,” denounced Barrado, who recalled that, according to article 93 of the Constitution, the Government and the Spanish Cortes have the responsibility of guaranteeing compliance with the treaties. international agreements and their resolutions.
“We demand that the Government and all parliamentary groups comply with these resolutions. It is essential to adopt measures such as the arrest warrant against the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant,” the judge noted. The platform has also called for economic and political sanctions against Israel, an arms embargo and the breaking of diplomatic relations as long as the genocide in Gaza continues, with more than 45,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023.
“We do not want Spain to be complicit” in this genocide, the spokesperson stated. In addition to demanding compliance with international law, Barrado added that “a necessary measure is access for Palestinian asylum seekers and that they not be returned, because some Palestinians who were at the Barcelona airport have already been returned.”
“Palestinians must have access to the international protection system in the same sense that has already been done with nationals of Venezuela and Ukraine,” the spokesperson stressed.
The platform recognizes and appreciates “the value of the recognition of the State of Palestine and the actions of the Spanish Government before the international community”, such as the denunciations of President Pedro Sánchez in the United Nations General Assembly of “the unbearable spiral of death and devastation” in Gaza; but the group considers that they are insufficient: “Spain must guarantee the adoption of measures aimed at preventing the perpetration of crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and adjacent regions,” insists the manifesto of Jurists for Palestine.
For this reason, legal professionals and academics have prepared a package of proposals that they will present to the parliamentary groups at a meeting this Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. The objective is for these measures to be promoted as a non-legal proposal and a working group to be established for their development.
The proposals are based on the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of July 19, 2024; in the support of the UN General Assembly for the International Court of Justice of September 13 – which urged “States to fulfill their obligations under international law”–; and in the recognition of the International Independent Commission of Inquiry which declared on October 18 of this year that “all States and international organizations are obliged to act to end the illegal occupation [de Israel]including exerting political, economic and cultural pressure on the Israeli government,” according to the Jurists for Palestine manifesto.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the PSOE, Podemos, Sumar, Esquerra Republicana and EH Bildu confirmed their participation. During her appearance before the media and reading her manifesto, the event was attended by the leader of Podemos, Ione Belarra; the ERC spokesperson in Congress, Gabriel Rufián; or the representative of Más Madrid, Tesh Sidi.
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