This recent development can of course be interpreted as the usual, predictable shift when it comes to right-wing and left-wing politics, and which is particularly evident in South America. Diplomatic allegiances have always shifted according to the electoral result; the only constant has been the two-state compromise so far, which both left and right-wing governments endorse.
Under the presidency of Evo Morales, Bolivia severed ties with Israel in 2009 over Operation Cast Lead. “The crimes committed by the Israeli government affect peace and stability in the world,” Morales had stated. Under the short-lived military coup in 2019 in which Jeanine Añez assumed rule, relations with Israel were restored. In October 2023, under President Luis Arce, Bolivia again severed ties with Israel, becoming the first country in the region to do so.
“Today we are ending the long, unnecessary chapter of separation between our two nations,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar stated. As far as diplomatic relations go, that statement will ring true for as long as a right-wing government lasts at least.
However, there is also much to be gleaned regarding human rights – supposedly universal – from the breaking off and reestablishing diplomatic relations with Israel, and the two-state compromise.
Left-wing and right-wing governments all endorse the two-state paradigm. Left-wing governments, therefore, are conflating their stated support for Palestine with support for Israeli colonialism.
Left-wing leaders that severed ties with Israel over previous aggressions against Gaza and the current genocide failed to speak out against the two-state paradigm, thus still endorsing Israeli colonialism.
The majority of left-wing and right-wing governments were hesitant to call out and condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Bolivia’s restoration of diplomatic ties with Israel comes at a time when the ceasefire, violated hundreds of times by Israel, cancelled out the reality of an ongoing genocide in Gaza. And while it may be easy to point out the restoration of diplomatic ties between Bolivia and Israel as a manifestation of right-wing violence, what does the tacit acceptance of genocide by the majority of world leaders, tell us about universal human rights, international law violations and crimes against humanity?
What about all world leaders who saw, as the rest of us did, Gaza destroyed, its people butchered, and who kept talking about the two-state paradigm as a solution to genocide, knowing that the 1947 Partition Plan was one of the earliest precursors to what is going on now?
Without a collective left-wing opposition to genocide, how does one speak of the right-wing’s indifference and complicity with genocide? What really distinguishes governments’ positioning on genocide, when an entire spectrum of complicity with the exception of a few, allowed Israel to implement its next step in erasing Palestinians and colonising Palestinian territory?
The two-state paradigm united world leaders to stay silent on genocide. It also revealed an almost universal acceptance of genocide, and an almost universal rejection of human rights. Bolivia may be in the spotlight for restoring diplomatic relations with Israel, but not a single country endorsing the two-state compromise can truly affirm a stance against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
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