Gabriel Boric reported this Wednesday that will open a Chilean embassy in Palestine. He did so during a Christmas party with the Palestinian community and after the diplomatic exchange that the Trans-Andean president had with Israel a few months ago, when he refused to receive the credentials of the new head of that country’s diplomatic mission.

“One of the decisions we have as a government, I think we haven’t made it public, I take a risk with this, is that we will raise the character of our official representation in Palestine. Today’s charge d’affaires, the day we open an embassy during our government,” Boric said.

In parallel, he added that he will ask for something that is “so fundamental” but is not being done, such as that “international law is respected”.

The Chilean president, who participated in the act of lighting the Christmas tree together with the Palestinian community of his country, said he was moved by the “recognition of the dignity of peoples”. resonate throughout Latin America.

In the face of suffering, we cannot be “protocol,” Boric said, adding, “We cannot forget a community in pain”.

“It always embarrasses me to look at the Middle East and not see Palestine on the map,” she said, but it is a people that “exists, resists, has traditions”expressed by the Palestinian Club of Santiago.

Boric had a batting average of diplomatic standoff with Israel in September when he refused to admit the credentials of Gil Artzyeli, Israeli ambassador to Chilean territory, following the death of a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank. The incident was left behind but threatened to increase tensions in relations between the two countries.

The history between Chile and Palestine

Chile has a representative office in the Palestinian National Authority in the city of Ramallah, which opened in April 1998. Meanwhile, Palestine currently has an embassy in Santiago.

they forged a close ties since the migration of Palestinians which began in the 20th century and currently has more than 300,000 people, making it the largest Arab colony outside the Middle East, and which also coexists with an influential Jewish community of about 30,000 members.

In 2011, Chile recognized Palestine as a state and then supported its entry into UNESCO.

Palestinians in Chile have held massive demonstrations to protest Israel’s shelling of Palestinian settlements.

“We cannot forget a community that suffers from an illegal occupation, a community that resists, a community that sees its rights and dignity violated every day,” said Boric.

Installed in Chile, the Palestinians devoted themselves mainly to trade and the textile industry, forming one of the most important foreign colonies. His descendants have successfully ventured into Chilean politics.

In 2018, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas visited Chile and met with then Chilean President Sebastián Piñera.

The relationship extends to football with the Chilean club Palestino, founded by Arab settlers in 1920 and whose matches are followed by thousands of fans in the Palestinian territories.

The controversy between Chile and Israel

The new Israeli ambassador to Chile, Gil Artzyeli, was summoned to the Palacio de la Moneda in September to deliver his credentials, but the president Gabriel Boric refused to receive it when the diplomat was already in place, which led to diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

The Chilean Foreign Ministry explained that “the presentation of credentials from Israel has been rescheduled for the second week of October, because today is a very delicate day for the death of a minor in the Gaza Strip”.

Days after that episode, Boric said that “the impasse has been overcome” and argued that it was “a decision after” that event that took place in the West Bank and of which, it seems, the Israeli security forces were responsible.

During his presidential campaign Boric had expressed it Israel was “a genocidal and murderous state”.

With information from the AP and AFP.

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