Venezuelan opposition leader and the latest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Maria Corina Machado said she would move her country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and strengthen ties with Israel if elected president.
“I believe and I can announce that our government will move our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem,” Machado said in an interview with an Israeli channel.
“I promise one day, we’ll have a close relationship between Venezuela and Israel. That will be part of our support to the State of Israel,” she added.
In 2009, Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, severed diplomatic relations with Israel and expelled the Israeli ambassador in protest against the 2008-2009 Gaza War.
Israel has massacred at least 67,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the last two years alone.
In September, Machado became a vocal advocate for U.S. President Donald Trump’s military expansion in the Caribbean, sharing his view that Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro represents a significant security risk to the region.
“This is about saving lives,” she had said in an interview with Fox News last month following the U.S. bombardment of suspected drug boats in the Caribbean.
“Not only Venezuelan lives, but also lives of American people, because as you have said, and we have heard, Maduro is the head of a narco-terrorist structure of cooperation,” she said.
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