In recent days, speeches on Gaza have been heard in the PP that might seem that they come from different matches. For example, the president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, has been heard in the delivery of medals of her community: “For responsibility, I raise his voice to barbarism and the horror that is being lived in Gaza. We cannot remain indifferent to so much suffering.”
On the other hand, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has been heard to the left of IR “against the only liberal democracy of the Middle East”, in reference to Israel, without questioning at any time her performance, and asking for the cessation “of the anti -Semitic boycott” in the return to Spain. And to the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, to defend that in Palestine “there is no genocide.”
The bloody offensive of the Israeli government in Gaza has emerged a clash of visions in the PP, on which Alberto Núñez Feijóo tries to balances. The PP leader seeks a conciliatory position of the different souls that also fits with the popular rejection that Genoa knows that the Palestinian massacre causes in the Spanish population, the reason why some sectors of the PP believe that Feijóo has condemned Israel’s performance. In parallel, the popular direction discourages the debate on genocide while denoting internal discrepancies.
It’s not just about nuances. What Guardiola condemns “energetically as terrorism and violence against the Gazatí population”, for the PP of the Community of Madrid is, on the other hand, “the fight against terrorism of the democratic state of Israel”, in the words this Monday of the spokesman of the Assembly, Carlos Díaz-Pache.
Amid opposite visions, Feijóo has sought a more equidistant position that condemns both the action of the Israel government and Hamás. The PP leader has censored that “what Israel is doing in Gaza is inadmissible.”
“Confusing civilians in Gaza with Hamas is inadmissible. Blocking humanitarian, unforgivable aid. Israel has to fulfill international law,” he reflected Monday in a Telecinco interview after Pedro Sánchez appeared in Moncloa to announce new measures, including an embargo of weapons by decree law. Although he shared with Sánchez, the condemnation of Israel’s performance in Gaza, Feijóo reproached him that he had not emphasized, at the same time, that “Hamas is terrorist” and that “he has not asked to release the hostages.”
What the PP leader did not do, unlike the president of the Government, is to qualify as “genocide” the massacre of civilians in Gaza. Even in spite of the internal discrepancies, the PP as a whole refuses this debate that is uncomfortable and with which the left presses, which does have a clear and uniform position in favor of considering the Palestinian killing.
Genoa seeks the balance – unlike the PP of Madrid, which does not condemn Israeli action against the Palestinian civilian population – aware that Spanish public opinion rejects the extermination in Gaza. The PP’s address has surveys that attest, according to popular sources, and tries to move in that frame without departing too much from the syllable sympathies with Israel.
The PP strengthened ties with the Israelis in the government of José María Aznar and the Madrid PP retains strong links with the Jewish community. But as internal voices recognize, deep down the Spanish right feels closer to the Israelis, no matter how far the Netanyahu government goes, because they face Muslims. “We are those of the reconquest,” exemplifies a popular leader.
The PP also fights with the pressure of Vox, which cries out against “the threat of Islam” with openly Islamophobic positions and is dragging the PP gradually to its land. After the controversy this summer in the Murcian municipality of Jumilla, where the PP and Vox approved to prevent the two major Muslim festivities from celebrating in a municipal sports center; This week the Government of Murcia has also given up before Vox and has eliminated the Arab language program in schools.
With this problem of cross pressures, Feijóo will have to decide what he does with the decree of the embargo of Armas of Israel announced by Sánchez and will approve next week the Council of Ministers. At the moment, Genoa leaves his position in the air waiting to know the text of the decree, while he strives to minimize internal discrepancies. “Mr. Feijóo has been very clear, what we are asking Israel is that it does not get out of the rules of armed conflicts,” the PP parliamentary spokeswoman, Esther Muñoz, which in turn defended that “everything that is happening in Gaza is the fault of Hamas” was reasoned on Tuesday and denied that there are differences between Guardiola’s speech or that of the Madrid PP or that of the Madrid PP or that of the PP of Guardiola or the speech of Guardiola or that of the PP. “I don’t see the confrontation between one thing and the other,” said the deputy.
