Kast made the remarks during a meeting with Herzog on the sidelines of the inauguration of Costa Rica\u2019s new president, Laura Fern\u00e1ndez Delgado.<\/p>\n
Chile has not had an ambassador in Israel for the past two years, following a decision by former President Gabriel Boric. Relations deteriorated sharply under Boric, a left-wing leader who was strongly critical of Israel.<\/p>\n
During his term, Boric refused to accept the credentials of Israel\u2019s ambassador to Chile at the time, Gil Artzyeli, in protest over the killing of a 17-year-old Palestinian who had fired at Israeli forces during an operation in the West Bank. Gabriel Zaliasnik, a former head of Chile\u2019s Jewish community, described the incident at the time as \u201cthe most serious expression of hostility toward Israel by the president.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boric has previously called Israel a \u201cmurderous\u201d state and supported a boycott of settlement products. Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East, numbering more than 350,000 people.<\/p>\n
Kast told Herzog that Chile wants to restore friendly ties with Israel and promote cooperation in agriculture, health, artificial intelligence, technology and other fields.<\/p>\n
Kast also said he had faced criticism in Chilean media over his decision to meet with Israel\u2019s president, but said he would focus on Israel-Chile relations and technological cooperation. He also said he was acting against terrorism and antisemitism in Chile.<\/p>\n
After the meeting, Herzog said the two leaders discussed \u201cimportant opportunities to strengthen Israel-Chile relations for the benefit of both countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe meeting was excellent,\u201d Herzog said. \u201cWe discussed important opportunities to restore Israel-Chile relations to their previous heights, for the benefit of our two nations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herzog also met with Honduran President Nasry Asfura and is expected to hold additional meetings with regional and world leaders attending the inauguration, including the outgoing and incoming presidents of Costa Rica, Spain\u2019s king, and leaders or senior officials from Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Cura\u00e7ao, Aruba and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
Costa Rica, which is hosting the visit and inauguration, is considered a close friend of Israel. Herzog\u2019s visit has so far passed quietly, except for an anti-Israel sign hung on a main road accusing Israel of genocide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kast made the remarks during a meeting with Herzog on the sidelines of the inauguration of Costa Rica\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-432341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}