GAZA, (PIC)
President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday that Colombia will sever diplomatic ties with Israel, whose leader he described as “genocidal” in its war in Gaza.
“Tomorrow (Thursday) diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be severed… for having a genocidal president,” Petro told a May Day rally in Bogota — referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Petro told thousands of supporters that the world cannot accept “genocide, the extermination of an entire people.”
“If Palestine dies, humanity dies,” he said to loud applause from the crowd, some of whom flew pro-Palestinian banners.
Petro had previously come out in support of Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who also provoked the ire of Israel for saying its Gaza campaign “isn’t a war, it’s a genocide.”
Colombia and Brazil supported South Africa’s complaint against Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, saying the Gaza assault amounted to a breach of the genocide convention.
