Spain's parliament approves arms embargo against Israel

The Spanish parliament on Wednesday approved Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's arms embargo on Israel.

The parliament backed the decree announced in September by Sanchez with 178 votes for to 169 against.

Spain’s socialist prime minister banned buying or selling weapons to Israel shortly after Israel's assault on Gaza began following the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel.

A growing chorus of historians, legal experts and scholars has labelled Israel's war a genocide. Sanchez has become one of the most virulent critics among world leaders of Israel's devastating two-year-old war in the Palestinian territory.

In September, he announced a decree to "consolidate in law" the embargo he imposed as part of a series of measures against Israel's genocide.

"Israel's response to the terrible attacks committed by terrorist group Hamas on October 7, 2023 has ended up becoming an indiscriminate attack against the Palestinian population that the majority of experts have called genocide," reads the preamble of the law.

It bans all exports of defence equipment, products or technology to Israel and imports of such goods from the country.

The decree also outlaws the transit of aviation fuel with potential military use and bans the advertising of products "coming from illegal colonies in Gaza and the West Bank".

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The text allows the government to make exceptions for dual-use defence equipment, "if the application of the ban harmed general national interests".

Spain's leftwing Podemos party, which has four MPs and had criticised the decree for not going far enough, eventually joined other parties that comprise Sanchez's leftist minority coalition.

Sanchez has criticised the international community for failing to halt Israel's genocide, accusing major powers of being mired between "indifference" and "complicity" with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Spain was one of the first European countries to recognise the state of Palestine last year. Several other major Western countries, including Canada, the UK and France, took the step last month.