‘We are with you’: Visiting president reopens Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem
Presiding over ceremony in capital, Santiago Peña reverses decision by former administration to move embassy back to Tel Aviv, saying it was ‘driven mostly by internal revenge’
Visiting Paraguayan President Santiago Peña reopened his country’s embassy in Jerusalem during a ceremony on Thursday afternoon, attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying Asunción will continue to stand “with the people of Israel forever.”
“For me it is such a privilege to take this decision,” Peña said in comments at the ceremony. “Mr. prime minister, on behalf of all the Paraguayan people, we were with you, we are with you, we will stay with the people of Israel forever.”
The move makes Paraguay the sixth country — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to open its embassy in Jerusalem. Most other Israeli allies maintain an embassy in Tel Aviv, with many saying that the status of Jerusalem should be determined during a future two-state solution.
In 2018, Paraguay’s outgoing president Horacio Cartes announced that his country would open an embassy in Jerusalem, following similar moves by the US and Guatemala. But the embassy was moved back to Tel Aviv by Cartes’s successor Abdo Benitez after just five months. Benitez said he had not been consulted in the original decision and indicated that it harmed efforts to maintain a more neutral approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Peña, who entered office last year, said Thursday that he was “very sad” when the former Paraguayan administration, “driven mostly by revenge, an internal revenge, nothing to do with the people of Israel, decided to move [the embassy] back. I am very happy that this is taking place in this very moment that the world is living, where a lot of people talk but not many people act. For us, not only saying but doing is very important.”
Speaking at the ceremony, Netanyahu said, “Jerusalem will always be Israel’s undivided capital. This is a fact, and you recognize it. Thank you for opening the embassy here.”
The ceremony was marked with a festive ribbon-cutting and the affixing of a mezuza, a traditional Jewish scroll, on the door of the embassy. Peña has been widely feted during his trip to Israel, honored this week at a special Knesset session and holding meetings with an array of officials, including President Isaac Herzog.
Netanyahu lauded Peña’s address a day earlier to the Knesset, noting that “as you pointed out in your great speech yesterday, there is a basic sympathy between our people and the people of Paraguay. And you have to know the history of Paraguay to understand why it’s so common. Because you too are a small people. You, too, are beset by great powers. You, too, suffered the specter of annihilation.”
The prime minister said that the story of the Jewish people rebuilding a life in the land of Israel “means that there is hope for all nations of the world. And the one nation that we seize with great friendship and great sympathy and great love is Paraguay.”
In his own statement, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said, “There is a direct line connecting Paraguay’s vote to support the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947 and President Peña’s decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem — the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”
Sa’ar said that Israel signed a series of bilateral agreements and a Memorandum of Understanding with Paraguay during Peña’s visit, and that he will “soon lead a delegation to Asunción” in order to deepen the two countries’ bilateral relations.
Sam Sokol and Lazar Berman contributed to this report.
