Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal personally contacted Benjamin Netanyahu to assure him that Spain is not equal to PM Pedro Sánchez and that the Spanish people are on the side of Israel.
“Pedro Sánchez is not Spain,” said the leader of the right-wing Vox party after a face-to-face meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Abascal went to Jerusalem after the left-wing governing coalition formally recognized Palestine as an independent state on Tuesday, further escalating the diplomatic crisis between the two countries. The Spanish prime minister also personally received Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa and foreign ministers from several Arab countries in Madrid on Wednesday.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz accuses the Spanish government of being complicit in inciting the extermination of the Jewish people by recognizing Palestine, especially after far-left Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz (Sumar) said in a video message that Palestine will be “free from the river to the sea.”
According to Katz, Díaz’s words are anti-Semitic and her party wants Israel to disappear from the map. The foreign affairs chief also posted a video on X this week, which begins with the flag of Spain and then shows some images of Hamas attacks, interspersed with scenes of two men imitating flamenco dancers. The video ends with the message “Hamas: Thank you Spain.”
Santiago Abascal’s visit was an attempt to calm the diplomatic crisis, and he told Netanyahu that he is willing to do anything to expose Sánchez’s political and economic corruption.
He then assured him that Vox supports the Israeli people and recognizes their right to self-defense. According to a Vox statement, the party leader also said that “as long as Hamas has a single hostage and the terrorist organization is not eliminated, no one has the right to ask Israel to abandon its self-defense operations.”
Netanyahu, for his part, said he hoped Abascal would be able to win the Spanish prime ministership and would then reverse the hostile measures of the Sánchez government and withdraw recognition of the Palestinian state.
