Guatemala to join US in Israel embassy move
Guatemala is to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, President Jimmy Morales has said, following US President Donald Trump’s controversial lead on the holy city.
After speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Morales wrote to Guatemalans on his Facebook page Sunday that “one of the most important topics was the return of Guatemala’s embassy to Jerusalem,” from Tel Aviv.
“For this reason I am informing you that I have given instructions to the foreign ministry that it start the necessary respective coordination to make this happen,” Morales wrote.
Guatemala’s leader made the announcement on Christmas Eve, three days after two-thirds of UN member states rejected Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
In all, 128 nations voted to maintain the international consensus that Jerusalem’s status can only be decided through peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
Only eight countries stood with the United States in voting no to the resolution in the UN General Assembly, among them Guatemala and fellow Central American country Honduras. Both rely on US money to improve security in their gang-ridden territories.
The two nations are, along with El Salvador, in what is known as the Northern Triangle of Central America. Violence, corruption and poverty have made them the main source of illegal migration to the US, which gives them US$750 million to improve conditions at home.
Morales, like Trump, was a television entertainer with no real political experience before becoming Guatemalan president in 2016.
Last Friday, Morales foreshadowed the decision he was to make regarding Jerusalem, as he defended his government’s vote at the UN backing the US.“Guatemala is historically pro-Israeli,” he said.
“In 70 years of relations, Israel has been our ally.”
Morales’s position has become fragile in recent months because of allegations of corruption against him being investigated by a special UN-backed body working with Guatemalan prosecutors.
The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had said her country would “take names” of the states opposing its position, and Trump threatened to cut funding to countries “that take our money and then vote against us.”
Several significant US allies abstained from the UN vote, among them Australia, Canada, Mexico and Poland.
Others, such as Britain, France, Germany and South Korea were in the majority of 128 nations denouncing any unilateral decision to view Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The eight countries on the US side of the vote were: Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo.
Following the US decision on Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said he would “no longer accept” any peace plan proposed by the US, dealing a pre-emptive blow to a new initiative expected by Washington next year.