Colombia's FM: International community should redouble pressure on Israel

The international community should insist to Israel and its allies that the country negotiate a peaceful solution to the conflict in Gaza, Colombia's foreign minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said.

Murillo said actions in Gaza, where Israel's military campaign has killed some 36,000 people according to local authorities, constitute genocide.

"We must really insist, not just to the government of Israel but to its most important allies, many in the global north," Murillo told Reuters over the weekend.

"It is they who have the chance right now to convince (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu that it is important to reach a ceasefire, that it is key to permit humanitarian aid for Gaza and that it is central to sit down to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict," Murillo said.

Murillo did not name the Israeli allies he was referring to, but the country has received military aid from the United States for decades and is still due to get billions of dollars of US weaponry, though the Biden administration has said it remains concerned about the possible use of heavy bombs against civilians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.



Reuters