Yesterday on his X account, President Gustavo Petro threatened to break diplomatic relations with Israel if it "does not comply with the United Nations ceasefire resolution." Israel Katz, Israel's foreign minister, responded by accusing the president of "supporting Hamas." Since the massacre on October 7, President Petro has tweeted dozens of times about the conflict in Gaza while announcing diplomatic actions against Israel through the same means. Likewise, he has received reproaches for some positions, also on X, from the foreign ministries of the United States, Germany, and Israel. We are in the era of X diplomacy, which is anything but.
Since diplomatic relations were established at the end of the 1950s, Israel and Colombia have maintained deep ties in numerous areas. Israel has been Colombia's main commercial and political partner in the Middle East.
Colombia was one of the few countries that sold weapons to Israel shortly after it declared its independence. Our country, with the Colombia 3 battalion, is part of the Multinational Observer Force that was established in Sinai in 1982 after the signing of the peace agreements between Israel and Egypt. The intense military and intelligence cooperation between Israel and Colombia, as we will see through statements in that sense by President Petro, to which the United States is added, has extended to the fight against terrorism, organized crime, and cybercrime.
Israel and Colombia signed a state-of-the-art free trade agreement (FTA) in 2013, which came into force in 2020 and also includes tariff-free products, investment facilities, and joint ventures. Colombia has benefited from foreign direct investment from the Jewish State in numerous projects.
Israel is a world leader on several of the issues on President Petro's agenda, such as water, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, climate change, and the environment. The Minister of Housing of Colombia, Catalina Velasco, during her visit to Israel the previous year, had the opportunity to visit the Sorek misalignment plant, the largest in the world, which uses technology that could be applied in Colombia in regions with a shortage of water. Precisely a few days ago, the Israeli embassy in Colombia, in one of the several cooperation projects, inaugurated small plants for the generation of drinking water in La Guajira, one with desalination technology and another with purification, for communities that lack the precious liquid.
Thousands of Colombians have benefited from study scholarships in Israel in the most diverse topics, while the extensive cultural exchange includes the presence of Israel in film, theater, and music festivals in our country, as well as singers of the caliber of Juanes, Carlos Vives, J. Balvin, and Maluma, who have performed with great success in Israel.
The two countries also maintain an extensive tourist exchange with open borders, without the need for a visa. Tens of thousands of Colombian Catholic and Christian pilgrims travel to Israel every year, as do academics and students, while our country receives thousands of visitors from the Jewish State, which has deepened relations between both peoples.
Two dynamic democracies, Israel and Colombia, members of the OECD, the 'good practices' club, have built a diplomatic relationship based on diverse interests that must transcend the vagaries of the current crisis and be preserved at all costs.
This article was originally published in Spanish in El Pais.
