Palestinians dig out the body of a child from the rubble of a building in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip on October 31, 2023, amid relentless Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian enclave. Thousands of civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, have died since October 7, 2023, after Palestinian Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip entered southern Israel in an unprecedented attack triggering a war declared by Israel on Hamas with retaliatory bombings on Gaza. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)
La Paz, Bolivia — Bolivia said Tuesday it was severing diplomatic ties with Israel as a rebuke for its bloody offensive in the Gaza Strip after a deadly Hamas attack last month.
The government “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 in 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.
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.
Bolivia only announced it was restoring ties with Israel in 2019, a decade after they were cut over previous attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Several leaders in the region have spoken out against the offensive, which the Hamas-controlled health ministry says has now killed more than 8,500 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and children.
The decision by Bolivia comes after Colombia called for Israel’s ambassador to leave the country before rowing back the comments in a diplomatic spat over the offensive.
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.