The Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas, thanked his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, this Thursday for breaking diplomatic relations with Israel. Abas assured that decisions like Colombia’s “constitute an example for the world to follow.”
Petro made the announcement during a speech in Bogotá for Labor Day and justified it because Israel has a “government” and “a genocidal president.” “The times of genocide, of the extermination of an entire people before our eyes, before our passivity, cannot come,” Petro added.
Late on Wednesday, the Colombian Foreign Minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, ratified the president’s decision in a statement. “This decision is directed exclusively at the severing of diplomatic relations and never against the Israeli people or against the Jewish communities,” the note added.
Murillo revealed this Thursday that the Colombian Government had been studying the diplomatic break with Israel “for a long time.” Last October, Petro had already threatened to break relations and since then he has shown himself to be one of the world leaders most critical of the Israeli massacre in Gaza.
On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz reacted to the measure by calling the president a “hate-filled anti-Semite.” “History will remember that Gustavo Petro decided to side with the most despicable monsters known to humanity,” Katz tweeted in reference to Hamas and its October 7 terrorist attack.
For its part, in a statement, Hamas also thanked Petro for his decision “in the face of the continuation of the war of extermination carried out by the Nazi occupation army against our Palestinian people.”
Colombia is the third country to break diplomatic relations with Israel since the invasion of Gaza, after Bolivia and Belize. For its part, Bahrain suspended its economic relations and several countries have withdrawn their ambassadors from the Hebrew country.
