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The leftwing junior partners in Spain’s socialist-led coalition government have called on the interior ministry to cancel a €6.6m (£5.7m) order for millions of bullets from an Israeli company, claiming the deal breaches coalition agreements and undermines efforts to hold Israel to account over its actions in Gaza.
Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, questioning whether it is following international humanitarian law and calling the number of Palestinian deaths “truly unbearable”.
In October last year, the interior ministry announced it had cancelled the purchase of 15.3m bullets from an Israeli company because of the government’s “commitment to neither buying weapons from, nor selling weapons to, the state of Israel following the outbreak of armed conflict in Gaza”.
But it emerged on Wednesday that the purchase of the 9mm ammunition, which had been ordered on behalf of the Guardia Civil police force, was going ahead because the interior ministry had decided the contract was too far advanced and too expensive to cancel.
The apparent U-turn prompted an angry response from the Sumar platform, which was founded by Yolanda Díaz, Spain’s labour minister and one of the country’s three deputy prime ministers.
The platform described the contract as a “flagrant breach” of the commitments made within the government on suspending the buying of weapons from Israel and demanded its immediate cancellation. It also called on the socialist interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to appear before MPs to explain what had happened.
“Our commitment to the Palestinian people is absolute,” the platform said in a statement. “That is why we have repeatedly called for a total embargo on the purchase of weapons from Israeli, for the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Israel, for the imposition of sanctions, and for the international criminal court to be supported in the arrest warrants it has issued for [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and other members of his government and the Israeli army.”
Others within Sumar went further. Antonio Maíllo, the federal coordinator of the platform’s United Left group, said he and his colleagues would not tolerate “any part of the executive financing a genocidal state” and said the issue had provoked the worst crisis to date between Sumar and the socialists.
News that the contract would proceed came a day after Sumar dismissed Sánchez’s plans to invest €10.5bn to enable Spain to reach its long-delayed Nato commitment of spending 2% of its GDP on defence as “incoherent” and “absolutely exorbitant”.
Sources at the interior ministry said the department began looking into annulling the contract six months ago and decided to proceed with it on legal advice.
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“Annulling the contract would have meant paying the company for the order without receiving the agreed materials, which are needed so that the Guardia Civil can fulfil its duties,” the sources said.
Despite the contract in question, they insisted the interior ministry shared the government’s commitment to not selling weapons to, or buying weapons from, Israel.
