In Latin America, the majority of the region’s governments condemn the genocide being committed by the Israeli occupation forces against the civilian population in the largest open-air prison on the planet, the Gaza Strip.
In fact, this is not at all sensationalism or exaggeration. In 2005, the occupation forces withdrew from the coastal enclave following an agreement with the Palestinian National Authority administration to hold elections. A year later, after the parliamentary elections, HAMAS extremists surprisingly and against all odds took control of the enclave from the Palestinian National Authority, which at the time was already headed by veteran politician Mahmoud Abbas.
The withdrawal of the Israeli authorities was never fully effective. Instead, they tightened a siege of the territory, which became an open-air prison. No one enters or leaves without permission from the Israeli authorities. They continued to lord it over these lands, ravaging them with violence, murdering children, women and the elderly.
Just before the offensive launched by the Islamist group HAMAS on October 7, 2023, the United Nations issued a warning about the danger posed by the Israeli Armed Forces’ policy of hostility against all Palestinian territories and especially against the Gaza Strip. Even the Zionist regime’s ally, the U.S. government, alerted the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the disproportionate use of repression against the Palestinian people. More than 100 people had perished in just three months due to the escalation. They were killed as they walked down the street, unarmed and without the slightest hint of being terrorists. Although this is not always a resource for preserving life in Palestine, since Israel considers the fact of being Palestinian as a defect to life.
This is how the events that triggered the current crisis came about. Latin America, whose countries are members or observers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), has maintained a discourse of condemnation insisting on the need for lasting peace in the region, as ordered by the very resolution that created the two states. However, political positions in Latin America are affected by political moods of those in power. Let’s call it a typical symptom of the region, which has brought about considerable hardships for its inhabitants.
The political path to follow in the region is not always told by common interest. This has been demonstrated with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In January of this year, the annual meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) condemned with the support of the majory the brutal massacre committed against Palestinian people in Gaza by the Israeli occupation forces. It seems that such an opinion would serve to uphold the majority position, but this is not the case in Latin America.
Because of this, we find governments ranging from radical positions, to the point of breaking diplomatic relations, to others that align with the Jewish state. The ideologies aside, the current government, the background and internal politics of each nation have distinguished the positions. The first country to break diplomatic relations with Israeli was Bolivia. We made the decision that we believe is the right one, we cannot turn our backs on a genocide, such as the one taking place in Gaza, the Bolivian president told the journalists at a press conference.
Chile, Colombia and Honduras have recalled their ambassadors for consultations, while Brazil and Mexico have condemned the high number of civilians killed in Israel’s brutal military campaign.
In the past three months, there have been two presidents in the region who have consistently denounced what’s happening in Palestine: the historic Latin American leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro. A coalition of several parties, joined by the Workers’ Party, helped Lula attain power, requiring the veteran politician to steer the ship in order to avoid provoking division. This context makes his steadfast support for the Palestinian cause and his vehement disapproval of the Jewish more courageous. Lula has not hidden her disapproval of the attack of HAMAS on defenseless people in Israel, which has considered as brutal as the ferocious response of Zionism. The Brazilian president does not hide that what is happening in the Gaza Strip is the biggest genocide since the Jewish holocaust during World War II. He stands up for his position with no qualms and accepts the consequences of his actions, both at a personal and political level. The Israeli government’s decision to declare Lula persona non grata, a person who will never be allowed to step foot on Jewish soil again, is proof of this. Lula’s position also reflects a retreat from the hesitant support he had garnered from the mass of voters who are ardent religious Protestants and who mostly support the policies of occupation of the Palestinian people.
The political scene in Latin America is awash with fresh faces with a long history. Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla fighter, has built his political career on his keen eye for advancing interesting projects. This is how he achieved a huge victory in the polls as the leader of the Pacto Histórico coalition, a group that’s never seemed to held up, but that’s still going strong.
Petro does not beat around the bush; he defies the great internal and external media power and takes positions condemning the Israeli massacre in Gaza. “If I had lived in Germany in 1933 I would have fought on the side of the Jews, and if I had lived in Palestine in 1948 I would have fought on the side of the Palestinians,” said Petro on his social network X expressing his deep commitment to just causes.
In order to make visible the horrible crime committed by Israel in Gaza, other countries such as Venezuela, Chile, Panama, Nicaragua and Cuba have also denounced the barbarity. They have carried out actions to make their differences clear through calls from ambassadors, letters to diplomatic headquarters and denunciations by high-ranking officials.
The position of Cuba, which is currently, forced to live the siege of the U.S. government blockade, merits highlighting. The entire Cuban population has been affected by the economic embargo imposed by Washington for more than 60 years. Cuba never signed the UN agreement for the creation of the state of Israel and never established diplomatic relations with Israel, so there are no embassies.
Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Uruguay and Argentina have given the interests defended to the current conservative governments. The most significant case is the one of Argentina, a country that has had a radical change in its international policy towards the Israeli genocidal policies. Although historically it has never been a strong critic of the Zionist regime, at least its leaders in the last 20 years have condemned or criticized the violence with which Israeli forces handle the situation in the region.
A completely new face appeared in the Latin American political panorama with the victory of Javier Milei at the head of the Libertad Avanza party. He figured he was a libertarian, a supporter of a fresh kind of liberalism where the rules of the market can be changed at will. A few months ago, Milei took a trip to Israel, which surprised many observers, but also demonstrated the distance he intends to maintain between his government and its predecessors. He visited the Wailing Wall, the sacred place of worship of Judaism, and capped his stay in Israel with an exchange with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He backed Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza and pledged to relocate the Argentine embassy to Jerusalem, sparking a media commotion in Argentina and elsewhere.
Latin America responds in its foreign policy to ideological premises, nuanced by the topics of right and left. With the region currently enjoying an upsurge of left-wing progressivism, at least in countries that have a significant weight in the world economy, it is favorable that the correlation of condemnation, criticism and rejection of the genocide committed by Israel in Palestine is leaning towards the defense of just causes.
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