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Barcelona City Council Suspends Ties With Israel Over Gaza Slaughter
"It's not a war, it's a genocide," said Councilmember Ada Colau. "We not only need to denounce it, we must act and not stay on the sidelines."
Nov 24, 2023
The city council of Barcelona, Spain's second-largest city, voted Friday to suspend relations with Israel's far-right government over what the party behind the move called the "genocide" in Gaza.
Introduced by the leftist Barcelona en Comú party—which asserted that "no government can turn a blind eye to a genocide"—the resolution demands the municipal government discontinue "institutional relations with the current government of Israel until there is a definitive cease-fire, and respect for the basic rights of the Palestinian people and compliance with United Nations resolutions are guaranteed."
The resolution also calls for requiring public contracts to ensure that "no operator belongs to or carries out" activities "that go against international humanitarian law" and "rejects and condemns attacks against the population civilian, both Israeli and Palestinian, as well as any action constituting collective punishment, such as the forced displacement of population, the systematic destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, or the blocking of the supply of energy, water, food, medical supplies and medicines to the population of the Gaza Strip."
Barcelona en Comú Councilmember Ada Colau said in a statement that "it's not a war, it's a genocide, and as [Spanish] President Pedro Sánchez has stated, it is unbearable, and if it is unbearable, we not only need to denounce it, we must act and not stay on the sidelines."
"Every 10 minutes, a child dies in the Gaza Strip under the bombs of one of the most powerful armies in the world," she added.
Colau, whose eight-year tenure as Barcelona's mayor ended in June, earlier this year
announced her city was cutting ties with Israel and ending its symbolic 25-year-old "twin cities" relationship with Tel Aviv due to the Israeli government's "crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people."
Barcelona's current mayor, Jaume Collboni of the Socialists' Party of Catalonia, reversed Colau's move in September.
Earlier this month, Barcelona dockworkers also showed solidarity with Palestinians by refusing to load or unload military materials onto any ship bound for Israel or any conflict zone where they could be used against civilians.
The new Barcelona resolution urges Israel and Hamas to make permanent the temporary four-day ceasefire that began Friday morning, as well as an end to Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians in the illegally occupied West Bank and the unconditional and safe release of all hostages taken by Hamas.
On Friday, Hamas freed 24 captives—13 Israeli women and children, 10 Thai nationals, and one Filipino—as part of the cease-fire agreement. Israel released 39 Palestinian women and minors from behind bars to fulfill its end of the deal. Hamas has agreed to free 50 of its hostages in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israeli forces have arrested thousands of Palestinians on what critics claim are often dubious grounds meant to give Israel leverage and bargaining chips.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, nearly 15,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,000 women and over 6,000 children, have been
killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel that left around 1,200 people dead and 240 others kidnapped. The international humanitarian group Oxfam
said Thursday that newborn babies are dying from preventable causes in Gaza's hospitals due to the Israeli siege.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli attacks on Gaza, while around 7,000 others—including over 4,700 children—are missing and presumed dead. More than 1.7 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced and around half the homes in the besieged strip have been damaged or destroyed, according to United Nations agencies.
At least 255 Palestinians have also been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In addition to the Barcelona councilmembers who voted Friday for the resolution, other Spanish officials have also called for cutting ties with Israel's government over its Gaza onslaught.
Last month, outgoing Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra, who also leads the leftist Podemos party, urged her country's coalition government to petition the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes investigation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel's indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and for cutting off food, fuel, and electricity from the besieged strip's 2.3 million residents.
On Thursday, Belarra criticized Sánchez—a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party—for visiting Israel this week, arguing that his trip "only serves to whitewash Netanyahu and to equate the state of Israel, an occupying power that perpetrates a genocide, with the victims of the Palestinian people."
"Such inaction," she added, "is absolutely unbearable."
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'The Rain of Bombs Is Inhumane': Belgian Deputy PM Calls For Sanctions on Israel
"While war crimes are being committed in Gaza, Israel is ignoring international demands for a cease-fire," said Petra De Sutter.
Nov 08, 2023
As most Western leaders stand staunchly with Israel as it wages what many experts have described as a genocidal war on Gaza, a top Cabinet member of a NATO nation on Wednesday implored her government to sanction Israel and call for the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes committed by Israeli forces and Hamas.
"It's time for sanctions against Israel," Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter, a member of the center-left Groen (Green) party, said on social media.
"The rain of bombs is inhumane," she continued. "While war crimes are being committed in Gaza, Israel is ignoring international demands for a cease-fire."
"I am calling on the federal government to sanction Israel," De Sutter declared. "How? The International Criminal Court must be able to expand and strengthen the ongoing investigation into war crimes. There must be an investigation into the bombing of hospitals and refugee camps."
"This is war violence that is never, ever acceptable," she stressed. "Belgium must not support this violation of international law."
"There must be an import ban on products in our supermarkets that come from illegal settlements," De Sutter argued. "In addition, Israel's Association Agreement with Europe must be immediately suspended. There can be no business as usual."
"I also continue to reiterate that Hamas must release the hostages. And we must dry up the flow of money to this terrorist organization."
"Human rights are for everyone. The Palestinians are in a state of total hopelessness," she said. "That is why a political solution is required in which Palestine is recognized as a state and the initial pre-1967 borders are respected."
"I also continue to reiterate that Hamas must release the hostages," De Sutter added, referring to around 240 people kidnapped from Israel. "And we must dry up the flow of money to this terrorist organization."
On Wednesday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said that "the collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts... to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians."
While eight nations—Bahrain, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Jordan, South Africa, and Turkey—have recalled their ambassadors from Israel and Bolivia has completely severed diplomatic ties, no European country has taken such steps, and very few European leaders have gone as far as De Sutter in calling for punitive measures.
Last month, Spanish Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra, who also leads the leftist Podemos party, urged her country's coalition government to petition the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel's indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and for cutting off food, fuel, and electricity from the besieged strip's 2.3 million residents.
"The Israeli state must end this planned genocide against the Palestine people," Belarra told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.
"Why can we give lessons in human rights in other conflicts and not here when the world is watching in horror?" she asked, lamenting the "deaths of thousands of children [and] the mothers desperately shouting because they are witnessing the killing of their children."
Belarra also said Hamas must be held accountable for leading attacks in southern Israel that left more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, dead.
The Gaza Health Ministry
said Wednesday that since October 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 10,569 Palestinians—including more than 2,800 women and over 4,300 children—while wounding upward of 26,400 others and forcibly displacing a staggering 70% of Gaza's population.
"There is a deafening silence of so many countries and so many political leaders who could do something," said Belarra. "It seems the display of hypocrisy, which the European Commission is showing, is unacceptable."
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Spanish Minister Says Netanyahu Should Be Brought Before ICC for War Crimes
"Using the horrific murders of Israeli civilians by Palestinian armed factions as an excuse to justify Israel's crimes in general and the massacre in Gaza in particular is unacceptable," said Spain's minister of social rights.
Oct 16, 2023
Spain's minister of social rights released a statement Monday calling on her country's coalition government to petition the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing the ongoing aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip and the devastating blockade that has prevented the free flow of desperately needed humanitarian aid.
"Using the horrific murders of Israeli civilians by Palestinian armed factions as an excuse to justify Israel's crimes in general and the massacre in Gaza in particular is unacceptable," Ione Belarra, the leader of Spain's left-wing Podemos party, said in a video statement posted to social media.
"We ask our partner, the Socialist Party, to work together to present on behalf of the government of Spain a petition to the prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Court to investigate the war crimes committed in Palestine by Netanyahu, as was done recently in the case of the Spanish aid worker murdered in the Ukrainian war, as well as those perpetrated by Hamas in Israel and occupied territories against the civilian population," said Belarra, who also called for immediate efforts to protect civilians and negotiate an end to the violence.
Israel is not a member state of the ICC, but the top prosecutor for the Netherlands-based court toldReuters last week that war crimes carried out by Hamas and the Israeli government fall under the body's jurisdiction.
"It's horrendous what's going on, what we're seeing on our television screens. There has to be a legal process to determine criminal responsibility," said Karim Khan. "Willful killing, hostage-taking are grave breaches of the Geneva Convention and one has to comply with the law."
In the wake of Hamas' deadly October 7 attack on Israel, the Netanyahu government began what international human rights groups and legal experts have described as a campaign of collective punishment, bombarding the densely populated Gaza Strip, devastating civilian infrastructure, and cutting off the enclave's supply of food, electricity, fuel, and other critical supplies.
Israeli officials have
admitted that the assault on Gaza is primarily geared toward inflicting massive damage, not on precisely targeting Hamas.
More than 2,600 people in Gaza have been killed since Israel's bombing campaign began and more than a million have been displaced. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
warned Sunday that the Israeli airstrikes and blockade have sparked "an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe" as Gaza's healthcare system nears total collapse.
On Friday, the Israeli government ordered the entire population of northern Gaza—more than a million people—to evacuate ahead of an expected ground invasion, a demand that prompted global outrage. Rights groups said the directive could amount to the war crime of forcible transfer, given that Gazans have been given no guarantee of safe passage or clear assurance that they will be able to return to their homes.
Israeli bombing on Monday
reportedly dashed hopes of a temporary agreement to allow people to flee Gaza and let humanitarian aid enter through a border crossing between Egypt and the occupied territory.
In her remarks on Monday, Belarra decried the complicity of European governments and the United States—Israel's primary supplier of weaponry—in the devastating attack on Gaza and urged the E.U. to "stop blindly following" the U.S.
"The United States and the European Union are not looking the other way or acting in a neutral manner, they are encouraging the state of Israel in its policy of apartheid and occupation that seriously violates human rights," said Belarra. "Using Hamas as an excuse to murder thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, is unspeakable hypocrisy on the part of both Israel and the countries that justify it."
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