The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, announced this Wednesday, May 1, that His country will break diplomatic relations with Israel.
“Here, before you, the president of the republic informs that tomorrow diplomatic relations with the State of Israel will be broken.”
Petro’s announcement came before thousands of supporters in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, during events commemorating International Labor Day.
Petro had already harshly criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza in its war against the Islamist militant group Hamas.
“Today humanity, in all the streets, agrees with us. The era of genocide, of the extermination of an entire people before our eyes, before our humanity, cannot return. If Palestine dies, humanity dies and we are not going to let it die,” Petro added in his speech this Wednesday.
The break in relations announced by the current Colombian government, the first left-wing government in the country’s history, represents a 180-degree turn in the policies of previous administrations, which had established Colombia as Israel’s main ally in the region.
Relations between Israel and Colombia have progressively cooled since Israeli forces responded with force to the unprecedented attack that Hamas carried out on its territory on October 7, 2023.
The Hamas incursion ended with more than 1,2000 deaths and the taking of 240 hostages. Israel’s offensives in Gaza have claimed more than 34,000 lives in Gaza.
A few days after the conflict escalated, Israel said it would “suspend security exports” to Colombia after Petro compared the language of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to that used by “the Nazis with the Jews.”
In February this year, Petro suspended arms purchases from Israel after dozens of people were killed while searching for food in Gaza during an Israeli offensive.
The president described these acts as “genocide”, said that they were reminiscent of the “holocaust” and added that the world should “block” Benjamin Netanyahuthe Israeli prime minister.
Bolivia had become a few months ago the first country in the region to break relations with Israel after October 7.
End of a “special relationship”?
In 2020, the then government of Ivan Duque signed a “state-of-the-art” Free Trade Agreement with Israel.
It was the step with which Colombia established itself as Israel’s main ally in the region, deepening a relationship that had rapidly strengthened in the previous 20 years.
Since the beginning of the 20th century and during the Cold War, Colombia was in turn a capital ally for the United States in Latin America.
“And the conjunction of interests between the two countries and Israel led to the creation of a strategic triangle between the three”Marcos Peckell, professor of diplomacy and international relations, told BBC Mundo in an interview.
After the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 and the rise to power of Alvaro Uribe In 2002, Colombia joined what the United States called the global war on terrorism.
From that moment on, Colombia declared the guerrillas “terrorist organizations” and went from seeing its own war as an armed conflict to seeing it as a “terrorist threat.”
And that was when the Israeli military, which for decades faced movements it considers terrorists such as Hamas and Hezbollah, fully came in to support the Colombian Armed Forces.
Between 2002 and 2006, according to official figures, the import of military material from Israel to Colombia doubled.
The cooperation has not only been military.
Over the past 24 years, for example, thousands of Colombians participated in Mashav, an Israeli Foreign Ministry education program that trains foreigners in medicine, agriculture and technology.
That is why it has been so common to see Colombians and Israelis spending months or years on exchange in the other country in search of enriching their training.
The exchanges of this “special relationship” are now unknown.
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