Embassy move seen as win for Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY: Guatemala’s move of its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Wednesday was the culmination of longstanding friendly ties between the two nations.

It has also been seen by many as an attempt to curry favour with the administration of US president Donald Trump, which two days earlier inaugurated its own embassy in disputed Jerusalem. Perhaps most important, it is considered an easy domestic victory for Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales, whose government is beset by economic problems, gang violence and corruption allegations that continue to dog him and those close to him.

“I think it’s driven much more by domestic factors in Guatemala, the right-wing evangelical support for both Morales and their support for the state of Israel,” said Michael Allison, a political scientist specialising in Central America at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

“Morales and many in the Guatemalan political and economic elite were in favour of moving their embassy,” Allison said. “They would not have done it without the US doing it first, but it is not as if they were doing something that went against what they wanted to do.”

Israel has always claimed Jerusalem as its capital, but other countries put their embassies in Tel Aviv because of the holy city’s contested status – Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. This week’s embassy moves came amid protests in Gaza that saw nearly 60 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops during clashes along the border.

Guatemala became the second country to recognise the Israeli state, in 1948, and it was the first to put its embassy in Jerusalem, in 1956. It shifted its legation to Tel Aviv 24 years later after the Israeli parliament declared Jerusalem the eternal and indivisible capital in contravention of a UN resolution.

Moving its embassy certainly didn’t hurt Guatemala’s standing in the eyes of pro-Israel groups and some US lawmakers such as Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who recently put a hold on $6 million (R75.3m) in US funding for the UN anti-graft commission over an unrelated issue.

Manuel Villacort, a Guatemalan political sociologist, said part of Morales’ calculus is likely to seek international allies due to difficulties at home. But he predicted that while the strategy may have yielded a quick win, over time Morales will still have to do more to solve core problems such as violence and corruption. “This is a relief for him, it gives him oxygen, but only in the short term,” Villacort said.