Lula and Sánchez demand that Israel stop the bombing in Gaza, which the Brazilian calls “genocide” | Spain

The war in Gaza became one of the most relevant issues of the joint press conference between Pedro Sánchez and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on a trip by the Spanish president with a clear economic content, designed to support Spanish companies in their attempt to expand in Brazil and access a part of the enormous pie of up to 300,000 million euros in public investments that the Government of the leader of the Workers’ Party wants to deploy. Sánchez has the clearest position among Europeans demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, something that has caused him diplomatic problems with Israel. And Lula goes even further, speaking openly of “genocide”—a word that the Spaniard avoided despite being expressly asked—and crying out against Israel and against the UN Security Council, which is also failing to stop the war.

“Israel has the right to defend itself but respecting international law. After 30,000 deaths, and after seeing a situation in the Gaza Strip that will take decades to recover, there are more than reasonable doubts that Israel is complying with international humanitarian law. We propose a peace conference, the urgent end of violence in Gaza, and the recognition of the two States, Israel by the Arab countries and Palestine by the Western world,” said Sánchez at the Planalto palace, headquarters of the Brazilian presidency.

“We now need a humanitarian ceasefire. We must not be algorithms, we must be human beings. What is happening is a genocide that has killed 30,000 people, 8,000 of them children. The UN council has to stop this war. More than 30 tons of food cannot arrive. If this is not an inhumane act, what is? There is such great brutality, everyone is horrified, something like that has rarely been seen. Brazil condemned the terrorist act by Hamas but we cannot stop condemning the actions of the Government of Israel. We are seeing 6 or 7 year old children asking to die because they do not want to be amputated without anesthesia. That touches our hearts. “Brazil is fighting for this, for a ceasefire to be declared,” Lula concluded.

Elections in Venezuela

Both presidents also showed a certain closeness on the issue of Venezuela, and both were very satisfied that Nicolás Maduro had finally set a date for the elections. Although Sánchez was more cautious and limited himself to trusting that the elections would be truly democratic, while Lula appeared closer to Maduro. “From Spain we have been defending the elections in Venezuela for many years. We celebrate that they are convened and we are going to contribute to celebrating them with the democratic guarantees that the Venezuelan people deserve and need,” Sánchez summarized.

“I hope these elections are as democratic as possible. Maduro told me that he is going to summon observers from all over the world. I’ll wait to see if they are democratic. And I’m just saying that when they didn’t let me show up in 2018 [fue encarcelado] I didn’t cry, I looked for another candidate. In Brazil, a president who lost the elections continues to say that there was fraud, he continues to raise doubts. Venezuela needs democratic elections, and so does Maduro. But we need the presumption of innocence. Not all candidates accept defeat, I lost three times and I accepted the results calmly, I went home to prepare, I lost again. “Venezuela needs democratic elections to be able to recover the space of international forums and see the end of the North American blockade of Venezuela, hopefully also of Cuba,” Lula insisted, which led Sánchez to reply that “in Spain there are also members of the opposition who put the electoral result is in question.”

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Lula’s strategy in Venezuela consists of acting as a facilitator, without loudness or stridency, so that the Chavista government and the opposition find their own solution. Maduro, who last week promised Lula in a bilateral meeting that he would call elections in the second half of the year, has just set a date. Venezuelans are called to the polls on July 28, the birthday of the late Hugo Chávez.

Mercosur-EU Agreement

The EU agreement with Mercosur also had a lot of presence in the visit. There was a point last December when it was almost ready. Only a few fringes remained, the advertisement and the signature. The Argentine Alberto Fernández was reluctant to sign it because he was on his way out, but there was no doubt that his successor, the ultra-liberal Javier Milei, would support him. But the final blow came at the end of the year, when farmers’ protests broke out in France and Macron’s Government left the pact for dead and buried. However, both Lula and Sánchez have vehemently defended that the agreement is alive and ready to be signed. “We have not gone backwards, on the contrary, we have never advanced as much as now. We are ready to close the agreement with the EU. It happens that France has long had problems with its farmers. But the EU can close the agreement without France. You will have to accept it. I regret that we did not close it when Sánchez presided over the EU and I presided over Mercosur. However, the EU needs that agreement, as does Mercosur,” Lula cried. “We have the duty to close the agreement with Mercosur. It would be good for Mercosur and it would be great for the EU. We are not the problem, I think it would be a change in global geopolitics. We hope to be able to reach an agreement soon,” Lula supported him.

With the European elections just around the corner, in the middle of the race for the re-election or succession of President Ursula Von der Leyen at the head of the commission and the tractor protest still alive, no one among the 27 wants to touch the matter. Perhaps a new opportunity will open in a few months to definitively conclude an agreement conceived for two decades and agreed upon five years ago.

But while the EU includes environmental safeguards, threatens sanctions and resolves its internal emergencies, Brazil’s trade – the largest of the Mercosur countries – with China and the rest of Asia is going from strength to strength. Just look at the Brazilian trade balance. The Asian giant replaced the US as Brazil’s first trading partner in 2009. Since then, bilateral trade has quadrupled. And Brazilian exports to China last year were almost as much as the sum of what was sold to the US, the European Union and Mercosur. And that’s without taking into account other powerful markets such as Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam.

Almost seven years have passed since the last visit of a Spanish president to Brazil, that of Mariano Rajoy months after the dismissal of Dilma Rousseff, which removed the Workers’ Party from power. And Spain is the second largest investor in Brazil, especially in the energy, banking, telecommunications and insurance sectors. With some 3.3 billion annual investments, it is estimated that the amount invested amounts to 59 billion dollars.

The two Spanish issues that have had the most impact in Brazil in recent years have been the racist insults to the soccer player Vinicius JR, which became a national confrontation that mobilized President Lula and several of his ministers. All the Dani Alves case, From his arrest thanks to a protocol against sexual abuse in bars that Brazil has imported to the recent conviction for rape, he has had enormous media coverage. Furthermore, Lula has just presented a bill to regulate the work of application drivers whose creation was inspired by the rider law Spanish and in the tripartite negotiations between the Government, companies and unions. The Brazilian president explained at a press conference that Spain is an inspiration for Brazil due to its labor reforms and opened the door to expanding the presence of Spanish companies after remembering that some of them, such as Telefónica or Banco Santander, have in mind this economic giant one of its largest and most profitable markets in the world. Lula, representative of the classic Latin American left, has always opted for pragmatism and for opening the doors to foreign investment and generating a pro-business environment. Brazil is growing and Lula likes to remember, as he did in the press conference, that if 15 years ago he owed money to the IMF, now it is the fund that is Brazil’s debtor because it lent it money during the worst of the financial crisis.

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