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“Mr. President, you’re a true pal of Israel,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett instructed Juan Orlando Hernández shortly earlier than the inauguration ceremony for Honduras’s new embassy in Jerusalem in June. “The Jewish folks have a protracted reminiscence, and you can be recorded within the pages of historical past as having accomplished a courageous and justified deed for the State of Israel.”
Transferring the embassy wasn’t the one coverage the Honduran chief enacted in help of Israel. All through his eight years as president, Hernández has made the Central American nation — which acknowledged the State of Palestine lower than three years earlier than he took workplace — into one among Israel’s most dependable allies.
In addition to turning into the fourth nation to open an embassy in Jerusalem, Honduras underneath Hernández’s management has usually supported Israel on the UN and different worldwide our bodies.
However Hernández is leaving workplace on January 27, to get replaced by Xiomara Castro, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist whose husband and marketing campaign supervisor allied himself with far-left Venezuelan chief Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro when he was president himself. The president-elect has declared her intention to overturn a lot of Hernández’s insurance policies.
As he entered the ultimate weeks of his presidency, Hernández spoke with The Occasions of Israel by Zoom early in December to debate how he had reoriented Honduras’s relationship with Israel, and the place the bilateral relationship might be heading underneath the brand new authorities in Tegucigalpa.
Israel’s fingerprint
Hernández first got here to Israel in 1991 on a management course run by MASHAV, the International Ministry’s Company for Worldwide Improvement Cooperation.
He known as the journey “life-changing.”
“It was fairly spectacular to see the adversity, the way you labored very onerous to make the desert flourish,” he stated. “I’m from the agricultural space of Honduras. However in case you take a look at the agriculture of Israel, it’s superb for me. It was a life-changing scenario for me to see how for hundreds of years, the persecution of the Jewish folks, the primary Jews who went and settled the land although there are swamps and desert. You’ve got been altering that. I imagine that few nations in the complete world have accomplished what you’ve got accomplished.”
Mattanya Cohen, former ambassador to Honduras, instructed The Occasions of Israel final yr that he has little doubt that Hernández ’s choice to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was influenced by his participation within the MASHAV course. Cohen stated Hernández had personally instructed him how a lot the instruments he had acquired from MASHAV helped him construct his public profession.
That profession started in 1998 when he entered Honduras’s parliament. In 2010, throughout his fourth time period, Hernández was elected president of the Nationwide Congress. Three years later, he defeated Castro to develop into Honduras’s president at age 45, as his opponent rejected the outcomes and took to the streets to protest.
As president — whereas going through allegations of drug trafficking and corruption — Hernández centered on tackling violence. When he got here into workplace, Honduras had the best homicide price on the earth. After pushing reforms within the police, army, and intelligence businesses, that determine dropped by greater than 50 % throughout his presidency.
“We couldn’t have accomplished that with out Israel’s assist,” he stated, pointing at Israeli expertise and shut ties between the nations’ safety businesses. “In the entire technique that we drafted firstly of my program, there’s the fingerprint of the Israeli folks.”
And it was Israeli agricultural expertise that performed a central function in his relationship with then-US president Donald Trump.
Muchos hablan, pero unos pocos actúan. Gracias Presidente @JuanOrlandoH. Lo más importante: los niños y sus padres volveran a estar juntos en familia. pic.twitter.com/jk5jNxnqcW
— Partido Nacional (@PNH_oficial) June 20, 2018
“Originally, he was very demanding, and even hostile,” Hernández recounted. “With the area, not simply Honduras — Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras — due to immigration.”
When Hernández and Trump started working collectively on curbing migration from Central America throughout the US’s southern border, ties improved markedly. One of the vital profitable initiatives to deal with root causes of migration was enhancing agricultural manufacturing, particularly within the nation’s “dry hall,” the place droughts and meals shortages drove Hondurans to move north. Utilizing Israeli expertise, productiveness on the area’s small farms elevated, enabling some to even export their produce to different nations.
“In the long run, I believe it was a really respectful relationship,” he stated.
The safety and technological cooperation bore fruit within the diplomatic area. Underneath Hernández, Honduras usually voted in opposition to or abstained on anti-Israel resolutions on the UN and different worldwide our bodies.
Honduras was one among solely 9 nations — together with the US, Israel, and Guatemala — to vote in opposition to the 2017 UN Basic Meeting decision that rejected America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It was additionally one of many 37 nations that boycotted the Durban IV convention in September.
Hernández’s authorities has stood with Israel in different worldwide boards as properly. In Could, the UN World Well being Group adopted a decision specializing in Israel alone as a well being rights violator. Honduras was one among 14 nations to vote in opposition to the measure.
Honduras paid a worth for its help for Israel. In 2018, its candidate for the presidency of the UN Basic Meeting was rejected when anti-Israel nations efficiently mobilized behind Ecuador’s nominee.
The embassy course of
Probably the most seen manifestation of that help was the embassy transfer in June.
Hernández stated that it was by design that he didn’t transfer the embassy throughout his first time period. “I wished it to be a course of,” he stated. “To start with, I don’t need it to only be the transfer from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It must be reciprocal. It’s important to reopen the embassy in Honduras. Second, it has to proceed past my time period and [then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] time period.”
Israel had closed its embassy in Tegucigalpa in 1995 for budgetary causes, counting on its envoy in Guatemala to function a nonresident ambassador to Honduras as properly.
International Ministry sources had been additionally quoted as saying Honduras wished improved ties with the Trump administration.
In December 2018, Channel 12 reported {that a} delegation of senior officers from Honduras visited Israel, reportedly to discover the potential of transferring the Honduran embassy to Jerusalem, after secret talks with the prime minister.
The embassy transfer was seen as particularly problematic as a result of Honduras has the second-largest Palestinian inhabitants in Latin America.
However Cohen instructed Military Radio that the problem didn’t deter Israeli diplomats: “I didn’t hand over. We began with quiet contacts behind the scenes, with ministers, with parliament members, and the neighborhood.”
The primary transfer was to open diplomatic workplaces in each capitals. Hernández traveled to Israel in August 2019 to open Honduras’s workplace in Jerusalem and acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a transfer that was oddly introduced initially in Israel by Netanyahu’s spouse Sara in a Fb reside video feed.
In January 2020, Honduras formally declared Lebanon’s Hezbollah a terrorist group. That August, Israel opened a short lived consultant workplace within the Honduran capital.
The ultimate choice, which included Israel reopening its embassy in Tegucigalpa, was introduced in September 2020 after a telephone name between Hernández and Netanyahu, however due to the COVID-19 restrictions, Hernández couldn’t journey to open the embassy till June 2021.
Because it turned out, he was the primary international chief that Bennett met in particular person. “He was very type, very excited,” Hernández recalled. “For him I believe it was like a present that he was prime minister and was so excited to be a part of that historic second.”
The 2 mentioned cooperation in milk manufacturing, agriculture, and safety, in accordance with Hernández.
“It was good for me to listen to from him that although we began the method with Netanyahu, we had been going to proceed.”
Although Netanyahu didn’t attend the ceremony in Jerusalem’s Malha neighborhood, he did ensure to go to Hernández in his resort.
Hernández observed a change in his outdated pal. “He stated he was sleeping higher and extra. He was relaxed, he was blissful we ended the method we had began.”
Bennett and Hernández additionally met on the sidelines of the COP26 convention in Glasgow in October.
Israel lastly reopened its embassy in Tegucigalpa in November at an occasion attended by Hernández, Strategic Planning Minister Eli Avidar, and Israel’s envoy to Honduras Eldad Golan.
Ties underneath Castro
The urgent query now could be how Castro will handle the connection with Israel, and whether or not she’s going to transfer the embassy again to Tel Aviv.
There are definitely worrying figures surrounding Castro. Her operating mate, First Vice President-elect Salvador Nasralla, has issued antisemitic statements, saying in 2020 that “JOH’s boss is the federal government of Israel.” The yr earlier than, he stated in a debate that the Jews management the phrase’s cash. His spouse apologized to Latin America’s umbrella Jewish group after calling Hitler “an ideal chief” in 2017.
Castro’s husband, Mel Zelaya, a previous president who tried to maneuver the nation in a Marxist course, claimed that Israeli mercenaries had been torturing him with high-frequency radiation after his ouster in 2009. Zelaya’s shut ally, journalist David Romero Ellner, stated it might have been “honest and legitimate to let Hitler end his historic imaginative and prescient” of eliminating the world’s Jews.
Against this, Hernández’s spouse, Ania Garcia Carias, has two flags of two nations in her workplace — Honduras and Israel.
Although he hasn’t spoken to her about it, Hernández appeared assured that Castro wouldn’t take the drastic step of relocating the embassy again to Tel Aviv.
“I imagine the Christian neighborhood, and the principles of this relationship, goes to be an essential argument to be able to preserve the embassy in Jerusalem,” he stated.
He additionally sees the legislature as an essential counterweight defending the connection. Although transferring the embassy is a presidential choice, the Nationwide Congress can affect it. “You realize presidents want some issues, and Congress wants some issues,” he stated. “I imagine there’s lots of people within the new Congress that may advocate to maintain this superb relationship with Israel.”
Spokespeople for Castro’s Libre get together didn’t reply to questions on her intentions concerning Israel and the embassy.
Yoni Peled, the International Ministry’s deputy director-general for Latin America, instructed The Occasions of Israel that he’s not overly involved that Castro will transfer the embassy.
“Proper now, we don’t see a motive for a change in coverage on this particular regard, the embassy,” he stated. “It could be that the relations will probably be chillier, or much less intimate, however we don’t see any indicators proper now of any intention to alter the extent of ties across the embassy.”
“The connection is not only between leaders, however between the nations,” Peled continued. “The truth that a president that represents the left is coming into workplace now — that doesn’t change the help for Israel from the inhabitants.”
Castro has additionally signaled her want to take care of shut ties with Israel and the US. One signal of her pragmatism was a gathering between Castro’s representatives and Golan, the Israeli ambassador. She has additionally met with enterprise leaders in an try to allay fears about her persevering with her husband’s insurance policies.
If Castro is certainly keen to proceed constructing on the connection, it might result in tangible advantages for each Hondurans and for Israel’s standing within the area.
“We’re in a triangle cooperation with the US, by USAID and MASHAV, in all kinds of packages to mitigate the phenomenon of immigration and the issues that result in it — social inequality, poverty, and corruption,” Peled defined. “We are attempting to assist Honduras take care of the foundation causes.”
On the inauguration of Brazil’s chief Jair Bolsonaro in 2019, Hernández spoke to then-Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales and Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez about making a regional pro-Israel coalition.
“The Christian folks in Latin America, the Jewish folks in Latin America, now we have to create a coalition to be able to advocate for Israel,” he stated. “And I imagine within the Christian neighborhood you’ve got crucial help. I’m not simply speaking about Central America. I’m speaking about the entire Latin America area.”
There are already parts of such an alliance in place. Honduras abuts different Central American allies of the US and Israel, El Salvador and Guatemala. Latin American nations are steadily opening governmental workplaces in Israel’s capital. Past Guatemala’s and Honduras’s embassies, Brazil opened its innovation workplace in Jerusalem in 2019, and Colombia and Ecuador have shared a Jerusalem workplace since November.
Given the numerous financial and social challenges Castro will face when she assumes the presidency in late January, she has good motive to decide on the pragmatic path of continuous cooperation with Israel and the US. Her silence on the problem up to now signifies that she might be ready to make up her thoughts. Israeli officers, Honduran associates of Israel, and Hernández himself will probably be watching carefully within the coming weeks to attempt to achieve a way of the place Israel-Honduras ties are headed.
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