Friendship with Israel in Latin America is not a 'zero-sum' game, official says
Israel is working to persuade Latin American countries that their relationships are not a "zero-sum game", as it faces a continent with fewer pro-Israel governments, a senior Israeli official said on Friday.
"Our challenge today is to ensure, convince, persuade governments in Latin America that the relationship with Israel is not a zero-sum game," Ambassador Jonathan Peled, deputy director general for Latin America and the Caribbean at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said.
"You can be pro-Palestinian, pro-Arab... that shouldn't be a detriment to the relationship with Israel," he said.
Peled said that Latin American countries, along with the US, were the "most important force" in establishing a plan for the partition of Palestine that led to the creation of Israel. He described support for Israel on the continent as "a matter of faith" for many of the region's Evangelical Christians.
Speaking on Friday alongside Peled at an event hosted by the Wilson Center in Washington to mark Israel's 75th anniversary, Alfonso Quinonez, Guatemala's ambassador to the US, said Latin American countries had learned that "being a friend of Israel pays off".
"Win, win, win, exists in the relationship between our countries and Israel," Quinonez said.
'A very different' Guatemalan history
Latin American countries were some of Israels earliest backers. In November 1947, 13 out of the 33 countries to support a UN plan dividing Palestine into two parts while keeping Jerusalem under international control were from the region.
Guatemala, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Panama, Venezuela and Uruguay all maintained an embassy in Jerusalem until 1980, when a UN Security Council resolution called upon them to move their diplomatic outposts to Tel Aviv.
Guatemala, a poor Central American country accused by the US and rights groups of democratic backsliding, has been one of Israel's closest partners. It was the first Latin American country to recognise Israel, creating a ripple effect in the region that led to other nations following suit. Guatemala returned its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 following the US embassy move under the Donald Trump administration.
Israel provided arms to Guatemala's government during its 36-year war against leftist militants that left 200,000 people killed or disappeared. Eighty percent of the identified victims from the conflict were indigenous Mayan, according to a United Nations-backed inquiry.
On Friday, Quinonez thanked Israel for its support during the war, saying: "If we had not received that, the history of Guatemala would be very different."
Peled said Israel's relationship with Guatemala defined its approach to its foreign friends with "aid in good times and aid in bad times".
Today, Guatemala is one of the top sources of migration to the US. Although Guatemala had an impressive four percent growth in gross domestic product last year, half of Guatemalans live below the poverty line and the country has the highest level of moderate or severe food insecurity in continental Latin America, according to the UN.
Between 2021 and 2022, about 230,000 Guatemalans were apprehended at the US southern border, the second-largest nationality after Mexicans, US border patrol data show.
Iranian inroads
In addition to bilateral ties, the diplomats also expressed concern about Iran's footprint in the region. Last week, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, as part of a trip he described as standing against the "domination system" of western countries.
Iran is one of Venezuela's main allies, alongside Russia, China, Cuba and Turkey. And like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, Tehran is subject to tough US sanctions.
Peled said that "the Iranian involvement in Venezuela is something we are following closely". In the 1990s, the Israeli embassy in Argentina and a Jewish cultural centre were both attacked and the blame was placed on Iranian-backed, Lebanese Hezbollah.
Tehran's ties to Venezuela underscore how Latin America is a theatre of competition between Israel and Iran, in addition to their ongoing shadow war in the Middle East.
In February, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva granted Iran permission to dock two warships in Rio de Janeiro despite pressure from the United States to bar them.
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro fostered close ties to Israel. His defeat in elections last year robbed Israel of one of its staunchest supporters in Latin America. In January, Lula fired Brazil's Bolsonaro-appointed ambassador to Israel as part of his promise to take a more "balanced and traditional" approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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