“Institutional and commercial relations with Israel must be broken”

Jaume Asens decided in June of last year that he would not repeat in the Congress of Deputies. He was convinced that it was the best decision and that it was necessary to open a new political time in the Lower House. He now faces another phase with his sights set on the European Parliament as number two on Sumar’s list for 9J. And he does so at a time when, as he confesses, the EU is “threatened” by the rise of the right and the extreme right.

The former deputy lives these hours of the campaign marked by the official recognition of the Palestinian State by the coalition government with the idea that we still have to go further. He is clear that institutional and economic relations with Netanyahu’s Executive would have to be cut, which is why he urges the PSOE to take bolder measures. However, despite the clashes between the partners, he predicts that the coalition will endure.

The Government approved this Tuesday official recognition of the Palestinian StateWhat do you think of the step taken? Do you consider it enough?

It is a historic step, we were indebted to the Palestinian people. It could not be that we proposed a two-state solution and only recognized one. It was a trap for the solitary. We had been fighting for years for the PSOE to accept it and we are pleased. But it is a step that comes late and is insufficient. It has an important symbolic character but it will not do much to stop the massacre that the Palestinian people are suffering. For that we have to take braver steps.

Which is it?

We think that one of them is to break institutional and commercial relations with Israel, as well as the total and permanent arms embargo with that State. This is what the students and organized citizens in the streets are asking for. It was what we did at the Barcelona City Council with Ada Colau. That is consistent with the diplomatic crisis we have with Israel and its far-right government. I believe that we are not responding to the level of the verbal escalation, the expletives, the insults and the threats of the Netanyahu Executive.

Spain is not responding up to the insults and threats from Israel

Israel’s foreign minister He has charged these hours against the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz.

We cannot stay with our arms crossed. If we remove the ambassador of Argentina for the insults to the president’s wife, it is with even greater reason that we have to do so with the ambassador to Israel as they are direct insults. It is much more serious to call the vice president of the Government and other members of the Government anti-Semitic than to call the president’s wife corrupt. This is a direct attack on the Executive. With an aggravating factor: it is repeated. And in this crisis there is another precedent that we must not forget.

Which?

The Pegasus case. The mobile phones of the president and the Minister of Defense were spied on with technology supervised by the Government of Israel, which has refused to facilitate the work of the Spanish Justice Department. We have a State that does not recognize any authority other than its own, and does not do so with the International Criminal Court, the Hague Court or the Spanish courts. He ignores international orders. I want to remember that a process against Netanyahu was initiated in the National Court and the PP approved an impunity law to save him. We ask the socialists to do more, but we do not want to stop denouncing the complicity of the People’s Party with the Israeli extreme right. Either you are with human rights or you are with Israel and the genocide it is practicing. There are no half measures. And what we ask of the PSOE and other parties like ERC is that they join this common front to ask that institutional and commercial relations with Israel be broken.

In the last few hours they have also been made public Sumar’s differences with the PSOE over the shipment of weapons to Ukraine. Is there a risk of the coalition breaking up or do we have to understand these clashes in an electoral key as the socialists say?

I don’t see any risk. On the contrary, the coexistence and stability of this Government has nothing to do with other times that I experienced firsthand when I was a deputy in Congress, where every day there was a scuffle between the partners. We are not in that situation now, the coalition is very well-oiled. Another thing is that obviously in the electoral context each one has to explain their proposals. It is true that we regret that the PSOE sometimes lets itself be carried away by electoral impulses and puts its partisan positions before the general interest and the defense of the Government, as for example it did in the middle of the campaign with the law against pimping. They are his moves to set a profile and are detrimental to the coalition. This is not the time to launch these types of proposals in Congress. And the case of Ukraine is another example: instead of seeking consensus with us and the parliamentary majority, it has decided to take a measure with an opaque pact and without accountability. We call on the socialists to return to the path of dialogue.

I don’t see any risk of the coalition breaking up.

Most surveys give to the PP As the winner of 9J, is there a shift to the right or can the left recover at the polls?

It is true that there is a reactionary wave in Europe and in the world in general, society is becoming more hardened. That’s why we try to encourage left-wing and progressive people in this country to vote. If we don’t mobilize, they win. It is a real risk and there are many people who are not giving the importance it deserves to this electoral challenge. We are at a historical crossroads. Many things in the future will depend on the fate of these elections. Surveys are not Moses tables. For this reason, we ask progressives to vote en masse to close the doors of Europe to a right that wants to put an end to the project of progress and the EU as a dream of freedom and peace. Right now Europe is threatened by the rise of the right and the extreme right and by the possible victory of Donald Trump in the United States.

Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the Commission and part of the moderate sector of the EPP, has opened the door to agreeing with the extreme right. Something that Alberto Núñez Feijóo is also pointing out regarding to the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. What do you think?

Bad news. It is a victory, without a doubt, for the Spanish PP, which is managing to set the tone for the other European conservative parties. We must remember what Angela Merkel’s position was on the cordon sanitaire to the extreme right, but now she is becoming more flexible. As always, the Spanish Popular Party is at the forefront in reactionary spirit and has a lot of weight in the EPP.

There is a reactionary wave in Europe and in the world

Can we break this traditional dynamic of recent decades? of an agreement for the Commission of social democrats, conservatives and liberals? Can you see a CE with the right and the extreme right?

It is a dystopian but viable scenario. What the surveys indicate is that this scenario cannot be ruled out and it would be the first time in forty years that it has happened, we would be facing a new Europe. It worries us enormously because the EU was born after World War II and the dream was built on ashes and ruin. We see how now the ghosts of xenophobia, racism and hate speech are once again haunting the European continent. That is why we must remember what we come from, that commitment against barbarism. With the right and the extreme right on the rise, peace is now more threatened than ever. We see it with the war speeches with the thunderous sound of war drums. It worries us. When that happens, the first to suffer are the popular classes. When the military budget increases, the social budget decreases. If there are more tanks, there are fewer hospitals. Either we are going to a neoliberal decomposition of Europe or towards a refoundation based on its fundamental values.

In these elections Sumar and Podemos go separately, something that already happened in Euskadi. Can the left be electorally competitive with this fragmentation? Would you like to go on future dates together?

Every choice is every choice. Now we attend separately and in the past we went together. Sumar’s doors are open for the future. It is the most ambitious coalition that has occurred in the last thirty years to the left of the PSOE, with more than thirteen parties. Would we like to represent more progressive sensibilities? Evidently. That scenario cannot be ruled out.

The Spanish PP is at the forefront in reactionary spirit

The Cortes approve definitively on Thursday the amnesty law. You were one of its greatest promoters. The PP is using it during the campaign and accuses them of recognizing Palestine to not talk about this norm. What do you think?

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