Soon after, Chile and Colombia announced that they would recall their ambassadors, pointing to what they described as Israeli violations of humanitarian law. Chile’s Foreign Ministry in a statement likened Israel’s military operations to “collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza” and said it does not respect “fundamental norms of International Law.”
Colombia, in its statement, expressed its “strongest rejection” of Israel’s actions in Gaza and called the situation “intolerable.” Colombia’s relationship with Israel has soured in recent weeks after its president likened Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Nazis and refused to condemn Hamas’s attack, prompting Israel to suspend security exports there.
The shift in South America comes after Israeli strikes hit a crowded refugee camp in Gaza, killing or injuring hundreds, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and the director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital. International human rights groups have for weeks sounded alarms about Israel’s bombardment and siege on Gaza, which has cut the enclave off from food, water, fuel and electricity. The United Nations children’s agency on Tuesday described Gaza as “a graveyard for thousands of children” and a “living hell for everyone else.”
Since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, more than 8,500 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Several countries have called for a humanitarian pause in fighting to facilitate aid deliveries, while others — including Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico — are calling for a more formal cease-fire.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry called Bolivia’s decision to cut ties “a surrender to terrorism” and said the government is “aligning itself” with Hamas in a statement Wednesday. In its public messaging, the Israel Defense Forces has said it is targeting Hamas infrastructure and leadership. It has accused the militant group of using civilians as human shields.
In breaking ties with Israel, Bolivia becomes one of a handful of Latin American countries that does not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Cuba severed its relationship in 1973, under what the U.S. State Department describes as pressure from Arab countries. Venezuela cut ties in 2009 over Israel’s military offensive in Gaza at the time. Bolivia also terminated its relationship with Israel in 2009 under leftist President Evo Morales but resumed diplomacy in 2019 under a right-wing interim president.
Chile and Colombia, both close partners of the United States, have in recent years elected leftist leaders; Bolivian President Luis Arce was elected under a socialist banner in 2020.
In recent years, Latin America’s approach to Israel has become “entrapped in the ideological cleavage between left and right,” Arie M. Kacowicz, Exequiel Lacovsky and Daniel F. Wajner wrote in the 2021 book “External Powers in Latin America.” A leftward shift that many Latin American countries experienced from the 2000s “had a negative effect on their policies toward Israel,” they wrote, while a rightward shift in the mid-2010s prompted a “drastic positive” change in policy toward the global North, the United States and, “by extension, to Israel.”
Kacowicz, a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said this particular case, however, “is a bit more complicated and breaks stereotypes between left and right.” While Bolivia’s response “could have been expected,” given its history, Chile and Colombia are more surprising, he said.
Chile, which has one of the world’s largest Palestinian diasporas outside the Middle East, saw “massive demonstrations demanding the breaking of diplomatic relations with Israel” in 2014, during a previous war in Gaza, Kacowicz said, and domestic politics could be an influence. Colombia’s decision to remove its ambassador “departs from the traditional close relations between the two countries,” he said.
