Colombia to Open Embassy in Jerusalem Next Week, Israel Says, as Protesters Rally in Bogota

Israel's foreign minister announced Thursday that Colombia will inaugurate an embassy in Jerusalem next week, making the South American nation the latest country to place its diplomatic mission in the contested city. The move deepens a shift in Colombian foreign policy under its new president and adds another entry to a small but expanding roster of states that have relocated their embassies from Tel Aviv.

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told attendees at a conference in Jerusalem that the inauguration would take place next Wednesday. The announcement was greeted by the Israeli government as a sign of strengthening ties with Latin America, a region where it has historically struggled to build durable diplomatic support.

A Colombian Foreign Ministry official, speaking to the AFP news agency from Bogota, said Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar would travel to Jerusalem on Sunday, ahead of the scheduled opening. The advance trip suggests the government intends to mark the occasion with a high-level presence rather than a low-key administrative handover.

The new embassy reflects a sharp reversal in Colombian policy. President Abelardo De la Espriella, who was sworn in during August, campaigned on a promise to restore close relations with Israel and moved quickly after taking office to reestablish diplomatic ties that his predecessor had severed. That earlier rupture was driven by Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which Colombia's previous government condemned as genocidal.

Under the prior administration, Colombia had been among the more vocal critics of Israel in Latin America, and the breaking of ties was presented domestically as a moral stance rather than a tactical one. De la Espriella's victory and his swift restoration of relations therefore represent not just a change of government but a change in the country's alignment on one of the world's most polarised disputes.

Saar used the occasion to press Israel's broader claim to the city, which Palestinians regard as the capital of their future state and which most of the international community does not recognise as Israel's capital. "We will work hard because this is the diplomatic battle over the truth," he said. "And the truth is, Jerusalem was always the capital of one nation." The remark dismissed Palestinian claims to the city, which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move that remains widely unrecognised abroad.

Because of that unresolved status, the vast majority of countries with diplomatic relations with Israel maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv, treating Jerusalem's final status as a matter to be settled through negotiation. The decision by a relatively small group of states to move their missions to Jerusalem has therefore been read as a political statement as much as a logistical one.

According to the source article, nine countries have opened embassies in Jerusalem since 2018: the United States, Guatemala, Paraguay, Kosovo, Honduras, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Nauru and Somaliland, the last of which is recognised as an independent entity only by Israel. The American move under the Trump administration in 2018 broke with decades of precedent and is widely seen as having encouraged other governments to follow suit.

Saar indicated that the list is likely to grow. He said the Democratic Republic of the Congo would open its embassy in Jerusalem "very soon" and hinted at at least one further opening, though he did not name the country. He also pointed to Brazil, suggesting that "with the possible results in Brazil, they might have the same move," a reference to right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro's first-round victory in the country's presidential election.

The Colombian announcement has not gone unchallenged at home. On Wednesday, demonstrators took to the streets of Bogota to protest the new far-right government's approach to Israel, including the decision to open the embassy in Jerusalem. The timing of the protests, a day before Saar's announcement, underscored how quickly the issue has become a domestic flashpoint.

Nicolas Isaza, who joined the rally, told Al Jazeera that the previous break in relations had carried a clear message. "When diplomatic relations with Israel were broken off, the message was that we would not be a nation complicit in their atrocities," he said. "Today our government is no longer drawing a line against the atrocities being committed in Palestine."

The episode places Colombia at the centre of a wider contest over how Latin American governments position themselves on Israel and the Palestinians. Brazil's election campaign has become a proxy for that debate, and Saar's comments made plain that Israeli officials are watching the region's electoral calendar closely, calculating where further embassy moves might follow.

For Israel, each new embassy in Jerusalem carries symbolic weight beyond the bilateral relationship, chipping away at the international consensus that the city's status must be decided through negotiations. For Colombia's new government, the opening delivers on a campaign pledge and signals a broader realignment. For the protesters in Bogota, it represents a break with a stance they regarded as a matter of principle rather than diplomacy.