Bolivia cuts ties with Israel over Gaza strikes

Minister of the Presidency Maria Nela Prada also announced the country was sending humanitarian aid to Gaza

Bolivia’s deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani (R) speaks next to the Minister of the Presidency Maria Nela Prada, during a press conference announcing that Bolivia will break relations with Israel, on October 31, 2023, at the Casa Grande del Pueblo government palace in La Paz, Bolivia. | Photo Credit: AFP

Bolivia said on Tuesday it was severing diplomatic ties with Israel over its "disproportionate" attacks in Gaza, as two other Latin American countries recalled their ambassadors over the mounting humanitarian crisis.

Bolivia "has decided to cut diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive being carried out in the Gaza Strip," deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani told a press conference.

Minister of the Presidency Maria Nela Prada also announced the country was sending humanitarian aid to Gaza.

"We demand an end to the attacks" in the Gaza Strip "which have so far caused thousands of civilian deaths and the forced displacement of Palestinians," she said at the same press conference.

In pictures | Gaza’s biggest refugee camp in shambles after Israeli raids

Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israeli strikes on houses in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, October 31, 2023.

The Jabaliya refugee camp is located in a densely built-up area of small streets on Gaza City’s outskirts. The camp has been the scene of much violence in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Jabaliya is the closest camp to the Erez border crossing between The Gaza Strip and Israel. After the 1948 War, refugees settled in the camp, most having fled from villages in southern Palestine.

Israel’s military confirmed striking Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp Tuesday, saying the operation succeeded in killing a key Hamas commander linked to the October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group.

In this frame grab from video, Palestinians are seen inside a heavily damaged apartment building following Israeli airstrikes at the Jabaliya refugee camp on Gaza City’s outskirts, on Oct. 31, 2023.

Israel aggressively defended the attack, with military spokesman Jonathan Conricus saying the targeted commander had also been a key planner of the bloody October 7 rampage that started the war, and that the apartment buildings collapsed only because the vast underground Hamas complex had been destroyed.

Before the strike on Jabaliya, the Health Ministry in Gaza said 8,525 people have been killed in the narrow strip of land since Israel launched its bombing campaign on October 7.

The toll from the attack in the Jabaliya camp was not immediately known. The director of the nearby hospital where casualties were taken, Dr. Atef Al-Kahlot, said hundreds of people were wounded or killed.

In the Jabaliya refugee camp — a densely built-up area of small streets on Gaza City’s outskirts — dozens of rescuers searched for survivors amid a series of obliterated buildings and others that had partially collapsed. The Israeli military said it carried out a wide-scale strike in Jabaliya on Hamas infrastructure “that had taken over civilian buildings.”

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The government of leftist Luis Arce is the first in Latin America to cut ties with Israel since the divisive conflict erupted with the Hamas attacks on October 7, which Israeli authorities say killed more than 1,400 people.

Israel responded on Wednesday by slamming Bolivia's move as "a surrender to terrorism."

"By taking this step, the Bolivian government is aligning itself with the Hamas terrorist organisation," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat said in a statement.

Bolivia only announced it was restoring ties with Israel in 2019, a decade after they were cut over previous attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Hamas hailed Bolivia's decision on Tuesday, saying it "holds it in high esteem" while urging Arab countries who have normalised their relations with Israel to do the same.

The leaders of both Colombia and Chile also spoke out Tuesday against the Israeli offensive on Hamas, which the Hamas-controlled health ministry says has now killed more than 8,500 Palestinians -- two-thirds of them women and children.

"I have decided to recall our ambassador to Israel (Margarita Manjarrez) for consultation. If Israel does not stop the massacre of the Palestinian people, we cannot be there," Colombia's leftist President Gustavo Petro wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Chile, which has the largest Palestinian population outside the Arab world, said Tuesday it was recalling its ambassador to Israel in protest against Israel's "unacceptable violations of international humanitarian law."

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, has urged a ceasefire.

He said the "terrorist attack" by Palestinian militants against Israel did not justify killing "millions of innocents" in Gaza.

"Just because Hamas committed a terrorist attack against Israel doesn't mean Israel has to kill millions of innocents," he said in a live address on social media.