Colombia’s Petro: No coal exports to Israel until Gaza ‘genocide’ ends
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro announced on Saturday the suspension of coal exports to Israel over the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The move signals a serious deterioration in relations between Colombia and Israel who were once close military and commercial buddies.
Colombia’s coal exports will only resume “when the genocide” in Gaza stops, Petro wrote on the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter.
He even posted a draft decree, which says that coal exports would only resume if Israel complies with the International Court of Justice’s recent order about withdrawing its troops from the Gaza strip.
Colombia’s coal exports to Israel exceeded $320 million in the first eight months of 2023, according to its National Statistics Department. This constitutes a small fraction of Colombia’s overall coal exports which were worth more than $9 billion in 2023.
According to the American Journal for Transportation, Israel imports over 50 per cent of its coal from the South American nation, and consumes much of it to feed its power plants.
On the other hand, Colombia has long relied on Israel for military hardware, involving assault rifles and intelligence equipment. It has also purchased over 30 fighter jets from Israel throughout the past three decades. It even depends on Israeli companies for the maintenance of these jets.
Petro, who successfully won elections in 2022 as Colombia’s first leftist president, decided to sever diplomatic ties with Israel in May saying that he could not continue to keep relations with the “genocidal” government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Unlike previous Colombian presidents, who maintained strong relations with Israel, Petro has been an outspoken critic of Israeli actions, and initially refused to condemn the Hamas attack on October 7.
However, both governments have continued to keep consulates in each other’s territories and conduct trade.
For its part, Israel made reciprocal announcements about halting new military purchases to Colombia.
The Global Energy Embargo for Palestine, an advocacy group that has been trying to convince nations around the world to stop coal and oil exports to Israel, applauded Petro’s latest move against Israel.
It said in a statement on Saturday that the Colombian move could put pressure on Israel to alter its policies in the Gaza Strip, and would also put pressure on Israeli settlements in the West Bank that rely on electric plants fueled by coal imports.
“We urgently call on South Africa, which provides 9 per cent of Israel’s coal, to follow Colombia’s lead,” the group added in the statement, while urging other countries with significant energy exports to also issue a ban.
