A three-week military offensive in the Gaza Strip in 2009, which killed more than 1,400 people, including an estimated 1,100 civilians, spurred Venezuela's Socialist president at the time, Hugo Chavez, to expel the Israeli ambassador in protest and sever diplomatic relations.
Seventeen years later, Venezuela and Israel have agreed to establish a mechanism for the resumption of consular services. It's a limited step, but one that until recently would have been unthinkable.
In Colombia, the nationalist government of new President Abelardo de la Espriella reversed the decision by his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, to sever diplomatic relations with Israel in protest of the country's most recent war in Gaza, which killed more than 70,000 people, nearly one-third of them children. De la Espriella has even announced that Colombia will relocate its embassy to Jerusalem, and this week declared that Colombia would join the United States as the only two countries that recognize "Israeli sovereignty" over the Golan Heights, which is Syrian territory under international law, but has been occupied by Israel since 1967. The vast majority of the international community, including Germany and the UN, does not recognize the annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel.
