AFP
War in Gaza: Colombia cuts diplomatic ties with Israel
Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced Wednesday the severance of diplomatic ties with Israel, calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “genocidal” in its conduct of the war in Gaza. Israel immediately accused Mr. Petro of “rewarding” the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which, for its part, welcomed the Colombian leader’s announcement, calling it a “victory”.Mr. Petro had strongly criticized, on several occasions, the war waged by Israel in the Gaza Strip after the unprecedented attacks by Hamas in the south of Israeli territory on October 7. “Tomorrow (Thursday), diplomatic relations with the State of “Israel will be broken (because it has) a government, a genocidal president,” the Colombian president said on Wednesday, during a speech to several thousand supporters in Bogota on the occasion of May 1. In Israel , the head of government is the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, while the president, Isaac Herzog, has a primarily symbolic role. “We cannot return to times of genocide, of extermination of an entire people” , declared the Colombian president. “If Palestine dies, humanity dies,” he said, triggering cheers from the crowd. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz immediately reacted by calling Gustavo Petro an “anti-Semite.” “The Colombian president promised to reward Hamas murderers and rapists, today he kept his promise,” Mr. Katz wrote on X. “We greatly appreciate the position of Colombian President Gustavo Petro (…) which we “Let us consider it a victory for the sacrifices of our people and their just cause,” the Hamas leadership said in a statement, calling on other Latin American countries to “break” their relations with Israel. The war broke out on October 7, when Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip in southern Israel carried out an attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report. from official Israeli data. More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain captive in Gaza, 34 of whom have died according to Israeli officials. In retaliation, Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas and launched an offensive in the besieged territory, which has so far left 34,568 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health. – “Genocide” – Bolivia, governed by a left-wing president, and Belize, a small state in Central America, had already ended their diplomatic relations with Israel due to its offensive in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Hamas attack on October 7. And South Africa, long a fervent defender of the Palestinian cause, had recalled all his diplomats from Israel at the beginning of November.Mr. Petro had on February 20 accused Israel of committing a “genocide” of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, expressing his “full solidarity” with his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, plunged into a diplomatic crisis for having drawn a comparison between the Israeli offensive and the extermination of Jews by the Nazis. The Colombian leader also announced that he would suspend the purchase of weapons manufactured by Israel, one of the main suppliers of the South American country’s security forces, reiterating his assertions regarding “a genocide” underway in Gaza which “is reminiscent of the Holocaust even if the world powers do not like to recognize it”.Brazil and Colombia support the historic procedure brought by South Africa against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for alleged violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948. The Confederation of Jewish Communities of Colombia said it hoped that “the relations between the two brotherly countries”, established in 1953, “be maintained, leaving open the paths of dialogue”, in a press release. “We cannot be accomplices of assassins”, said Sandra Gutierrez, a 38-year-old teacher, present in Bolivar Square in Bogota where Gustavo Petro made his announcement .das/mar/lab/dth/clr/am/lpa
