‘From a very young age,’ Colombia's President supported Palestinian cause

A year before the Nakba in 1948, when Zionist militias forcibly displaced at least 750,000 Palestinians to establish the State of Israel, Colombia's then-President Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo declared that "to divide Palestine without a real alternative for the Palestinians would be a monumental error."

Nevertheless, Colombia forged diplomatic, economic and cultural ties with the State of Israel a couple of years later.

In the subsequent years, there was a push to strike a balance in Israel-Palestine relations, given the weight of Arab and Jewish communities across Colombia's economic, political and social sectors, says Pio Garcia, a researcher at the Faculty of Finance, Government and International Relations of the Externado University in Colombia.

However, it was not until 2018 that Colombia recognised Palestine as a "free, independent and sovereign" state.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 29,195 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza. The bloodshed carried out by the Israeli army has been vehemently denounced by some Latin American countries, including Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

"When the genocide reached hideous levels in 2023, Colombia's voice also rose as a banner of peace before a disengaged and complicit international community," Garcia tells TRT World.

Among the most critical voices in Latin America has been Colombia's President Gustavo Petro. He said US "President Biden must act quickly to stop the genocide in Gaza" and urged Israelis to change their government and to push for "definitive peace" based on a two-state solution.

"I would expect that Petro's conciliatory or compositional spirit has been valued and recognised more externally than internally," Lisbeth Katherine Duarte Herrera, a researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences at Antioquia's Technological University Institute, tells TRT World.

However, Colombia is home to around 100,000 Palestinian descendants, and the leader's remarks seem to be resonating with the community.

"Until today, until Petro, we have had very close governments to Israel," says Odette Yidi, a third-generation Palestinian-Colombian whose family hails from Beit Laham and part of the 6 million Palestinian diaspora worldwide.

Yidi, a researcher and the director of Colombia’s Institute of Arab Culture, says some left-wing movements and politicians have historically been closer to Palestine, driven by different convictions, contravening rightwing parties and movements traditionally aligned with Israel and its "biggest ally", the US.

Internationally while acknowledging Israel's ongoing occupation, Petro has also questioned the West's "double standard" in relation to taking sides amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and not regarding Israel-Palestine.

Petro's roots

Colombia’s president hails from a family of subsistence farmers from Sinu who relocated to the Zipaquira village 40 km north of Bogota in the 1970s for economic reasons. At university, he gained a master's degree in economics and a Ph.D. in Business administration.

Petro says he has harboured long-standing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, writing, "From a very young age, I studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I know of the immense injustice that the Palestinian people have suffered since 1948. Just as I know about the immense injustice that the Jewish people suffered by the Nazis in Europe since 1933."

He said if he lived in the 1930s, he would have fought alongside the Jewish community and in the 1940s alongside the Palestinians while insisting on "peace to prevail and the Israeli and Palestinian people to be free."

Stemming from his role during his youth as part of the M-19 leftwing rebel group during Colombia's internal armed conflict, some reports suggest Petro "understands" the relationship between government oppression and political violence.

According to Colombia's Truth Commission between 1986 and 2016 around 450,000 Colombian’s were killed and more than 121,700 were displaced during a dark chapter in the country’s history amid fighting between the government and rightwing paramilitary allegedly working in collusion against leftwing rebel groups.

During the 1980s Colombia's government deepened commercial ties with Israel; as Garcia says, "Israeli expertise and weapons nourished the incipient paramilitary groups, which would soon become a ferocious monster."

From the late 1980s," retired Israeli general Yair Klein and his compatriots Terry Melnyk, Tzedaka Abraham, Izhack Shoshani Merariot and Arik Piccioto Afek trained the first (Colombian) paramilitary groups and sold them weapons," he says.

It included Carlos Castaño, a co-founder of one of the most notorious paramilitary groups who was trained in Israel, says Garcia.

During that era, Yidi says some leftwing rebel groups aligned with wider causes, including the Palestinian push for liberation.

She describes a "kind of South-South solidarity among revolutionaries, amongst freedom fighters, amongst people trying to make a change whatever it might be within their communities."

For his time with rebel M-19, Petro experienced jail time, alleging he was tortured and eventually being convicted of illegal weapons possession.

After Petro moved away from the so-called guerrilla movement, he began his political ascent. He worked as an adviser to the assembly re-writing the constitution before becoming a congressman and later accepting a diplomatic position in Belgium. After returning to Colombia, he became a lawmaker and mayor of Bogota.

"Even during his time as Mayor of Bogota, he demonstrated his commitment to Palestine," Felipe Medina Gutierrez, Professor of Middle East Studies and Muslim World at the Pontifical Javierian University in Colombia, tells TRT World.

Petro's pushback

Since October 7, Petro has taken a range of measures in response to the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. They include recalling Colombia's ambassador to Israel, rebuffing Israel's Ambassador's request to condemn the Hamas attack, and insisting "terrorism is killing innocent children in Palestine."

Colombia's leader announced a bid to open an embassy in the Palestinian city of Ramallah and called the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) interim ruling of 'plausible' genocide a "Triumph of Humanity," insisting "Israel must prevent genocide."

Yidi says outspoken leaders like Petro often face strong backlash, insisting, "It's not easy for any leader to stand up against the Zionist propaganda machinery."

Petro himself has also received pushback from Israel, labelling him "anti-semitic", and stopping security exports to Colombia after Petro drew comparisons to Israel's aggression in Gaza to Nazism.

"It's a very big act of courage because of all the censorship and of all the threats against people speaking up for Palestine so that the president is actually speaking up and so open about it and so truthful and honest and bold - I think that in (and) of itself is a win," Yidi says.

However, Gutierrez says, "Not everyone in his government and cabinet shares the same level of solidarity towards Palestine."

Petro's approach towards Palestine, Herrera says, is "consistent with its domestic (internal) policy of "total peace", which Gutierrez says largely centres on promoting life, preventing war and ending conflicts.

"What's new in recent times is the digital diplomacy through X (Twitter)", Gutierrez says.

He is also quick to point out that "a sector of the Colombian Christian religious community supports Israel without a true understanding of the history of the conflict or concepts such as Zionism."

Amid some polarisation in Colombia, Petro criticised the removal of several students from a university conference hall after raising a Palestinian flag. He insisted, "Colombia is a country of freedoms and rights. There is no place for censorship at a state university. Culture and freedom are synonymous."

But Gutierrez says there is some support across Colombia's political divide.

"There's a sector of the Arab community on the right (politically speaking) that finds contradictions in supporting President Petro in this situation," he says.

More broadly, Yidi believes Petro's remarks add weight to the Palestinian cause and resonate among different sectors.

"I have also seen people who didn't necessarily vote for Petro recognise, support and applaud his declarations on Palestine," she says.

Yidi believes the leader’s "outspoken" remarks are making the work of activists "easier" and contributing towards more backing for the Palestinian cause.

"(It) has, of course, resulted in more allies from different sectors and helped raise consciousness amongst big numbers of people that wouldn't have probably heard or would be interested about Palestine before," she says.

Petro has also floated the idea of big music artists performing at major concerts across Colombian cities to denounce the "genocide". He has called on the likes of prominent Puerto Rican rapper 'Residente' whose music touches upon a range of sociopolitical issues to perform.

Pro-Palestinian advocacy in Colombia

Despite the large numbers of Palestinian descendants originally from Bayt Jala, Beit Sahour, Beit Laham and Ramallah, Yidi says Colombia is different to Chile, which is home to over 500,000 Palestinian descendants that can leverage their weight at an institutional level.

Different Pro-Palestinian advocacy initiatives in Colombia, she says, are driven by civil society members, involving unions, professional associations, women's groups, and indigenous groups alongside Palestinians and Arabs.

According to Gutierrez, "Traditionally, solidarity stemmed from the left politically, but nowadays, there is support from citizens representing various political ideologies or even none at all; they see it as a matter of humanity."

Some see more similarities in the struggles of different communities, including indigenous and Afro-Colombian ones.

"I feel that the average Colombian is appropriating the Palestinian narrative as their own fight because they are seeing many intersections with their own reality, past and present, especially because of the colonial reality," Yidi says.

Petro warned the world at the Munich Security Conference in Germany in February 2024, insisting if decisions are made by "brute force, as in Gaza, we will fall into global barbarism, and Palestine will not be the final solution but the beginning." He went on to call for an end to "veto power."

Yidi says the challenge is to put all the global momentum into action to advance the Palestinian cause internationally while calling for an end to the barbarism in the besieged enclave.

"Since October 7, things have changed because right now, even people that are not necessarily leftwing are realising the impact and the danger of what's being done and the inability of any international mechanism to put an end to a live stream genocide."