Chile president plans to open embassy in Palestine
Santiago (QNN)- Chilean President Gabriel Boric, whose country has the largest Palestinian population outside of the Middle East, has announced that he plans to open an embassy in Palestine.
“I agree that words of good upbringing are not enough and one of the decisions we have taken as a government, I think we have not yet made it public… is that we will raise the level of our official representation in Palestine,” Boric said on Wednesday night.
“We will open an embassy under our government.”
Th leftist president, who began his four-year term in March 2022, made the announcement at a Christmas ceremony in Santiago for Chile’s Palestinian community, estimated to be more than 300,000 people.
Chile already has a diplomatic representation in Ramallah, but not a full embassy.
“We cannot forget a community that is suffering from an illegal occupation, a community that is resisting, a community that is seeing its rights and dignity violated every day and that this is absolutely justified, that must be said in all its words,” also said Boric at the event.
"We cannot forget a community that is suffering from an illegal occupation..”
Chilean President Gabriel Boric announced on Wednesday that his country would open an embassy in Palestine, during a Christmas party with Palestinians in Santiago. pic.twitter.com/8LODJSZ2is
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 22, 2022
Boric is a left-wing lawmaker known for being sharply critical of ‘Israel’ and a supporter of boycotts of goods from illegal Israeli settlements.
Moreover, he once supported a drafted bill in Chile’s National Congress. The bill was proposing a boycott of Israeli goods from illegal settlements in occupied West and East Jerusalem, and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
In 2019, Chile’s Jewish community sent Boric a jar of honey for Rosh Hashana. Boric responded on Twitter with “I appreciate the gesture. But they could have asked Israel to return illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”
In addition, Boric once called ‘Israel’ a “murderous state” in a meeting with the Jewish community during his campaign.
In March, Boric called on the international community to show solidarity with Palestine as it has shown support for Ukraine.
In September, he called on states not to normalize Israel’s ongoing human rights violations against Palestinians during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“We should not normalize the permanent human rights violations against the Palestinian people, applying the international law and resolutions that this assembly states year after year,” Boric said.
“[Palestinian people] they should yield to their inalienable right to establish their own free and sovereign state.”
Boric also in September refused to accept the credentials of incoming Israeli ambassador Gil Artzyeli over Israeli occupation’s crimes against Palestinians.
Chile, which hosts one of the largest Palestinian populations outside of the Arab world, has a community of between 300,000 and and half a million people of Palestinian descent living in a country with a population of 18 million.
