By Lorenzo Santiago on May 28, 2025
Palestine to Colombia, victory to the resistance.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro appointed the first Colombian ambassador to Palestine on May 26. The representative of the country’s diplomacy will be Jorge Iván Ospina, former senator and former mayor of Cali and a close confidant of the president. The measure was taken a year after Bogotá broke off relations with Israel based on the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Ospina is also the son of a commander of the now-defunct April 19th Movement (M-19) guerrilla group, which included Petro in the 1980s. So far, it has not been decided whether the embassy will be based in the West Bank or in a neighboring country. In an interview with AFP, he said that the country will discuss with Israel the possibility of opening a diplomatic office in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank.
“We will have to discuss and establish the necessary procedures with Israel to make it possible to establish the Colombian embassy in Ramallah. We, as a country, recognize the Palestinian state. We recognize that the Palestinian state and the Israeli state must coexist,” he said.
Petro has adopted a stance of denouncing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the conflict. Soon after the start of the Israeli troop offensive in the region, the Colombian leader began threatening to break off relations with Israel.
First, he called the attacks “genocide”. Then, he suspended the purchase of weapons from Israel. And finally, in a speech on May 1, he announced the breaking of diplomatic relations between Colombia and Israel due to the massacre committed against the Palestinians.
He also suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested over the advances of Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip. According to the Colombian president, the International Criminal Court could issue an arrest warrant for the Israeli and the United Nations Security Council should “begin to consider the creation of a peacekeeping force” in the region.
In June 2024, Petro received the Grand Collar of the State of Palestine for his advocacy for Palestinians and his strong stance against Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. The award is the highest honor that the autonomous Palestinian government can offer to a foreign official.
Two months later, the president banned the country’s coal exports to Israel in response to Israel’s genocidal actions against Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
Colombia and Israel have historically had a very strong alliance, even before the guerrilla conflicts in the South American country. Colombia was one of the countries that abstained from voting in the 1947 UN vote, which aimed to resolve the conflict between Palestine and Israel. That moment was decisive for the creation of the State of Israel.
Colombia then established an embassy in Tel Aviv in the 1960s, but has on occasion criticized the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
The two countries, however, were not only historical allies, but also key points for the United States’ actions in South America and the Middle East. In 1999, the US launched Plan Colombia, which aimed to expand the “fight against insurgency”. The US invested USD 1 billion (R$5 billion) in 2000, tripling their budget and representing 80% of military assistance for all of Latin America.
This relationship intensified during the government of Álvaro Uribe, elected in 2002, when Colombia became part of the “global war on terrorism” led by the US. The South American country stepped on the accelerator in the fight against the guerrillas and began classifying these groups as “terrorist organizations”.
At this point, Israeli military participation in Colombian armed conflicts is no longer classified but commercial. Between 2002 and 2006, imports of Israeli weapons into Colombia doubled.
Today, this trade has cooled. According to the United Nations (UN) trade data platform Comtrade, Israel exported around USD 138.8 million in products to Colombia in 2022. Of this, only USD 283,000 were weapons, ammunition and accessories.
The only government that differed from this policy was Juan Manuel Santos, who recognized the State of Palestine in 2016.
This article was first published in Brasil de Fato