Spanish PM Announces Restrictions on Israeli Shipping and Aircraft Amid Ongoing Gaza Genocide

Madrid (Quds News Network)- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced his government will increase pressure on Israel by banning Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from calling at Spanish ports or entering Spanish airspace, saying Israel “exterminating a defenceless people” by bombing hospitals and “killing innocent boys and girls with hunger” in Gaza.

Speaking on Monday morning to announce a raft of measures designed to increase the pressure on Israel to stop the genocide in Gaza, Sánchez said Spain felt compelled to try to “stop a massacre”.

“Protecting your country and your society is one thing, but bombing hospitals and killing innocent boys and girls with hunger is another thing entirely,” he said.

“What Prime Minister Netanyahu presented in October 2023 as a military operation.. has ended up becoming a new wave of illegal occupations and an unjustifiable attack against the Palestinian civilian population – an attack that the UN special rapporteur and the majority of experts already describe as a genocide.”

The Spanish prime minister pointed to the numbers of people killed, injured, displaced and malnourished during the genocide.

“That isn’t defending yourself; that’s not even attacking,” he said. “It’s exterminating a defenceless people. It’s breaking all the rules of humanitarian law.”

Sánchez also hit out once again at the international community, saying major world powers had ended up “paralysed between indifference over a conflict without end and complicity with the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu”.

Among the measures he announced “to stop the genocide in Gaza and to go after its perpetrators” was a law formalising the existing, de facto prohibition on military equipment sales or purchases with Israel, and a ban on the use of Spanish ports and airspace to transport fuel or weapons to the Israeli military. Sánchez also said those “directly involved in the genocide” would not be allowed into Spain and announced increases in his country’s humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“We know that all those measures won’t be enough to stop the invasion or the war crimes,” he said.

“But we hope that they will serve to add to the pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government, to alleviate some of the suffering of the Palestinian population, and to let the Spanish people know that their country was on the right side of history when it came to one of the most infamous episodes of the 21st century.”

In response, Israel accused the Spanish government of deploying “wild and hateful rhetoric” and of using a “continuous anti-Israel and antisemitic attack”.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, announced that two senior leftwing Spanish politicians, the labour minister and deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, and the youth minister, Sira Rego, would be banned from entering Israel because of their criticisms of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Sa’ar said it was clear that Díaz was “exploiting Prime Minister Sánchez’s political weakness and dragging him, step by step, into implementing her anti-Israel and antisemitic vision”.

Diaz has been critical of Israel’s war in Gaza and violations of a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, calling for imposing international sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel over its practices. Rago also described Israel as a “genocidal state” over its assault in Gaza and called on the European Union to cut all ties with Israel and impose sanctions.

Saar said further discussions regarding the bans on foreign officials will be conducted with Netanyahu.

Sánchez’s comments came almost a week after he desrcived Europe and the west’s response to Israel’s genocide as a “fauilire.”

Spain has been critical of Israel’s war on Gaza, and in October 2023, pledged to stop selling weapons to Israel. In February 2024, it said it also would not buy weapons from Israel.

In April, Spain also canceled a deal with another Israeli company, following pressure from ministers in the government.

Last year, Spain recognised the State of Palestine in a joint move with Ireland and Norway.

After resuming its assault on March 18 following a fragile ceasefire, Israel has pledged to intensify its war on Gaza. Since March 2, it has also blocked the entry of food, fuel and aid into the enclave, defying an order by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it must allow humanitarian access. The death toll in Gaza has now reached over 63,000, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.