2023-10-31 21:51:44
SERGIO LIMA / AFP (FILES) Bolivia’s President Luis Arce listens to Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaking during a meeting with fellow South American leaders at the Itamaraty palace in Brasilia on May 30, 2023. Bolivia on October 31, 2023, said it was severing diplomatic ties with Israel as a rebuke for its offensive in the Gaza Strip, launched following Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people in an attack last month. (Photo by Sergio Lima / AFP)
SERGIO LIMA / AFP
Bolivia, governed by left-wing President Luis Arce, becomes the first Latin American country to sever diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. (Photo by Luis Arce in May 2023)
INTERNATIONAL – The Bolivian government announced this Tuesday, October 31, that it was severing diplomatic relations with Israel due to the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The government “took the decision to sever diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, as a sign of rejection and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive carried out in the Gaza Strip”declared Bolivian Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani at a press conference.
Bolivia, governed by left-wing President Luis Arce, becomes the first Latin American country to sever diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
“We demand an end to the attacks”
“We are sending this official communication to the State of Israel, in which we make known our decision”declared the Secretary General of the Presidency, Maria Nela Prada, during the same conference, announcing the sending of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
“We demand an end to the attacks (…) which have so far caused thousands of civilian deaths and the forced displacement of Palestinians”she added.
Bolivia had already severed diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009. Former left-wing president Evo Morales intended to protest once morest Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip while La Paz has recognized a Palestinian state since the 1980s. Diplomatic ties were reestablished in November 2019 by a right-wing interim government before that Luis Arce, then runner-up to Evo Morales, won the presidential election in 2020.
Bloody reprisals
The war between Israel and Hamas, which entered its 25th day on Tuesday, was triggered by the bloody attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7 on Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip which it controls, leaving 1,400 dead, mainly civilians.
In retaliation, the Israeli army relentlessly bombs this besieged territory, where 2.4 million Palestinians are crowded together. And it is now conducting increasingly deep ground operations there.
On Tuesday at least 50 people were killed in an Israeli bombardment in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, the Hamas health ministry announced.
Before this bombing, Hamas had reported 8,525 deaths, including 3,542 children, and more than 21,000 injured since the start of the war.
In the occupied West Bank, at least 122 Palestinians have been killed by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers since October 7, according to the local Health Ministry.
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