BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombian president Gustavo Pedro announced on Saturday that his country will suspend coal exports to Israel during the war in Gaza, as relations sour between two countries that were once close military and commercial allies.
Petro wrote on social media platform X that coal exports will only resume “when the genocide” in Gaza stops. Petro also published a draft decree, which says coal exports will only resume if Israel complies with a recent order of the International Court of Justice which says that Israel should withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip.
According to Colombia’s National Statistics Department, coal exports to Israel were worth more than $320 million in the first eight months of last year. This represents a small fraction of the country’s global coal exports, which were worth more than $9 billion in 2023.
Israel imports more than 50% of its coal from Colombia, according to the American Journal for Transportation, and uses much of it to power its power plants.
Petro, who was elected in 2022 as Colombia’s first left-wing president, broke diplomatic ties with Israel in May, saying he could not maintain relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “genocidal” government.
Both governments continued to maintain consulates in each other’s territories and conduct trade.
Colombia has long depended on Israel for military equipment that includes assault rifles and intelligence equipment. The South American nation has also purchased more than 30 fighter jets from Israel over the past three decades and relies on Israeli companies for their maintenance.
However, further military purchases were halted as relations between the two countries deteriorated. Petro critics said the president’s decision to cut ties with Israel puts Colombia’s security capabilities at risk as its military battles drug cartels and rebel groups in the country’s rural areas.
Unlike previous Colombian presidents, who have maintained strong ties with Israel, Petro has been an outspoken critic of the Middle Eastern nation and initially refused to condemn the Hamas attack that preceded Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
