Together for Catalonia (Junts) has registered a motion in Parliament on the conflict between Israel and Palestine that urges the chamber to reaffirm its commitment to a peaceful resolution and to condemn the violation of human rights in any of these territories. In addition, Junts include in its text a point that asks Parliament to amend "the political, historical and conceptual error and inaccuracy of defining as apartheid any political system governing in any part of the Palestinian or Israeli territories". This is a reference to the controversial position taken by the chamber in June 2022, when the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), the Catalan Socialists (PSC), the Popular Unity Candidature (CUP) and en Comú Podem (Comuns) approved a motion, in the framework of Parliament's foreign action committee, affirming that the "system that Israel applies to the occupied territories" of the West Bank "is contrary to international law and is equivalent, according to the definition contained in article 7.2., letter (h) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, to the consideration of the crime of apartheid". It was a text that raised a lot of polemic.
This Junts motion follows last Wednesday's plenary session when the party asked the government about Catalonia's relations with Israel and Palestine. Junts deputy Francesc de Dalmases asserted that the executive should not leave Catalonia "in sectarianism or polarization" and advocated for a commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dalmases added that, from the point of view of his party, it is not "consistent" that "embassies are opened based on whether a country is liked more or less" and emphasized that Catalonia "cannot give up being everywhere". As is usual parliamentary practice, after such assertions a motion is registered, and it is this one that incorporates this point of "recognition of human rights around the world" and the condemnation of the "violation" of these both in Israel and Palestine. It also refers to the repeal of the accusation of apartheid in Israel and calls to recognize "Israel's right to exist".
The attack by Hamas in southern Israel last Saturday, which has set in motion a war in which more than a thousand people have already died, has given the debate on this subsequent motion an unexpected timeliness. This point will be part of the agenda of the next plenary session of the Parliament, which will take place from October 24th to 26th.
The Catalan Parliament, first European chamber to accuse Israel of apartheid
On June 16th, 2022, the Parliament of Catalonia became the first legislative chamber in Europe to approve a proposed resolution accusing Israel of committing crimes of apartheid. This decision surprised the Catalan Association of Friends of Israel (ACAI), which stated that "this outrage" turned the Parliament into "the laughing stock of Europe" and was a "demonstration that Catalonia is nothing more, nor it will be nothing more than a simple and vulgar region of Spain". "That the Socialists aim to harm Catalonia's relations with Israel, given that the Spanish state has full relations with Israel, and there is a Spanish parliament where they would never do the same, is understood. That the party that presides over the Spanish parliament should do this in Catalonia is simply incredible," they added. This resolution was also denounced by the then Catalan foreign minister, Victòria Alsina, who accused the groups of "trivializing" the term apartheid and pointed out that Parliament could approve "anything", but that this did not change the policies oin the Catalan government's relationship with Israel.