Guatemala opened an embassy in Jerusalem on Wednesday, two days after the United States inaugurated its new site in the contested city in a move that infuriated Palestinians and drew international condemnation.
Israeli troops shot dead dozens of Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border on Monday when the high-profile opening of the U.S. Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem by the administration of President Donald Trump raised tension to boiling point after weeks of anti-Israeli demonstrations.
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the embassy’s opening on Wednesday in an office complex in west Jerusalem.
“It’s not a coincidence that Guatemala is opening its embassy in Jerusalem right among the first. You were always among the first. You were the second country to recognize Israel,” Netanyahu said at the ceremony, referring to its founding in 1948.
Guatemala was one of only a few nations that backed Trump’s decision in December to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and it is only the second country to move its embassy to the holy city. Paraguay has said it will move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the end of May.
Trump’s move reversed decades of U.S. policy, upsetting the Arab world and Western allies.
The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to forging a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who with broad international backing want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as their capital.
Israel regards all of the city, including the eastern sector it annexed after the 1967 conflict, as its capital. The Trump administration has said the city’s final borders should be decided by the parties.
Source: Reuters