The Hamas Movement has strongly denounced Paraguayan president Santiago Peña’s decision to reopen the country’s embassy in Occupied Jerusalem after his predecessor retracted such an illegal step in 2018.
In a statement on Wednesday Hamas spokesman Jihad Taha called on the new Paraguayan president to reverse his wrong and unjust decision and avoid siding with the Israeli occupation state in its violations against the Palestinian people and their rights.
Spokesman Taha stressed that true justice requires making efforts to end the Israeli occupation and support the Palestinian people’s aspirations for freedom and self-determination.
If the Paraguayan president carried out such a step Paraguay would be the fifth country to open an embassy in Jerusalem following Kosovo Honduras Guatemala and the US.
In 2018 Paraguay’s outgoing president Horacio Cartes announced that his country would open an embassy in Jerusalem following similar moves at the time by the US and Guatemala.
However the embassy was moved back to Tel Aviv after just five months by Cartes’s successor Abdo Benitez who said he had not been consulted in the decision and affirmed that it harmed efforts to maintain a more neutral approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
