Venezuela and Bolivia break diplomatic relations with Israel

 

On Tuesday, January 6th, Venezuela ordered Israel’s ambassador expelled from the country on Tuesday in protest over the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Last Wednesday, January 14th, Venezuela and Bolivia formally broke diplomatic relations with Israel due to the Gazan Offensive. 

Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that Bolivia was breaking diplomatic relations with Israel and urged that Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert be declared war criminals.

The decision by President Hugo Chavez to expel the diplomat appeared to be the strongest reaction yet to the Gaza offensive by any country with ties to Israel.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry announced the move in a statement, saying it “has decided to expel the Israeli ambassador and part of the Israeli Embassy’s personnel.”

“How far will this barbarism go?” Chavez asked on state television before the ambassador’s expulsion was announced. “The president of Israel should be taken before an international court together with the president of the United States, if the world had any conscience.”

Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said its U.N. mission is joining with other countries in demanding the Security Council “apply urgent and necessary measures to stop this invasion.”

While many countries have protested Israel’s offensive, none besides Venezuela so far have expelled the ambassador.

Mauritania, which established relations with Israel in 1999, called home its ambassador from the Jewish state on Monday.

Jordan and Egypt, the other two Arab nations with relations with Israel, summoned their Israeli ambassadors to protest the Gaza attacks, but they have resisted popular calls to expel them.

In the announcement issued by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, on January 14th, the government cited “the gravity of the atrocities against the Palestinian people.”

The statement accused the Israelis of having “ignored, systematically, calls from the United Nations, violating in a repeated and shameless manner the resolutions approved by the overwhelming majority of their members and placing themselves ever more on the margin of international law.”

It described “19 days of continuous bombardment, the assassination of more than 1,000 people and the destruction of the infrastructure of the population of Gaza,” calling it “a human catastrophe that is unraveling before the eyes of the entire world.”

It further accused Israel of participating in “state terrorism” against “the most weak and innocent human beings: children, women and the aged.”

The statement called for Israeli leaders be tried before an international court for crimes against humanity.

Sources:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/6197446.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/14/bolivia.israel/index.html