Guatemala has said its decision to follow the US in moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem was a “sovereign” matter that should not affect ties with other countries.
“These are Guatemala’s foreign policy and sovereign decisions,” Foreign Minister Sandra Jovel told
“In any case, we are open to being able to converse with countries that see it as such, but I don’t believe it will create any sort of problem with other countries,” she said.
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales announced that he was ordering his country’s embassy to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite a UN vote last week condemning US President Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally view the holy city as Israel’s capital.
The announcement made Guatemala the first country to follow the United States in saying it was moving its embassy.
Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestinians, consider east Jerusalem as the occupied capital of their future state.
A UN General Assembly vote on Thursday Dec 21,2017 resoundingly rejected any attempt to unilaterally define Jerusalem’s status.
A total of 128 nations voted to maintain the international consensus that Jerusalem’s status can only be decided through peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians
The United States and Israel mustered seven other countries to their side to vote no to the UN resolution. The other nations were Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo.
The Palestinian foreign ministry has called Guatemala’s decision “shameful and illegal.”
Note
A former president of Guatemala, Ramiro de Leon Carpio, who was in power 1993-1996, had made a decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem, but backtracked when Muslim-majority countries shut off access to Guatemalan goods.
Guatemala is today much more reliant on the United States, which is giving USD 750 million to it and neighbouring El Salvador and Honduras to crack down on the crime and poverty that is stirring migration to the US.
The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they want to establish in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions.
Prior to 1980, Guatemala—along with Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, The Netherlands, Panama, Venezuela and Uruguay—maintained an embassy in Jerusalem.
Israel’s passage in June 1980 of a law proclaiming Jerusalem its “indivisible and eternal capital” led to a U.N. Security Council resolution calling upon those countries to move their embassies to Tel Aviv, prompting their transfer.
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