Palestine’s ambassador to Colombia appealed to the Santos administration to express international solidarity for Palestine by making a call for peace, reported Colombia’s Caracol Radio on Wednesday.
“I call upon the Colombian government, and every nation in the world, to unite and make an appeal for calm and peace [in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] and this peace can only be reached through the recognition of [an autonomous] Palestinian state,” announced Palestinian ambassador to Colombia Raouf Almalki, reported Caracol Radio.
MORE: Colombia supports solutions that allow Israel and Palestine to live in peace: Santos
The most recent conflict between Hamas and the Israeli army erupted several weeks ago when three Israeli teens were abducted while hitch-hiking in the West Bank on June 12 and subsequently murdered, leading to a retaliation in which a 16 year-old Palestinian boy was abducted and burned to death, according to US news magazine The Atlantic.
The subsequent retaliatory attacks have thus far left 43 dead and more than 4,000 wounded, reported Caracol Radio.
“We [the Palestinian Government] are against the missiles that are launched from Gaza, but these are mostly fireworks rather than anything else, because they almost never cause damage; the victims are on the Palestinian side,” said Ambassador Almalki.
Ambassador Almalki said that the Israeli bombardment of Gaza is a governmental strategy to distract attention from the internal struggle, reported Caracol Radio.
Colombia has so far failed to offer its support for the admission of Palestine as a member state of the United Nations and abstained from voting, but has offered to find ways to encourage a direct dialogue with Israel.
MORE: Colombia to abstain from UN vote on Palestinian statehood
Sources
- Palestina le pide a Santos que haga un llamado a la paz en Gaza (Caracol Radio)
- The Next Generation of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (The Atlantic)