Guatemala–Israel Relations

Guatemala’s support for the creation of Israel preceded the establishment of formal relations between the two countries.[2] Its representative on the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, Jorge García-Granados, supported partition into Jewish and Arab states and worked to secure Latin American backing for that proposal.[2] Guatemala subsequently became the first Latin American country to recognize Israel and maintained full diplomatic relations with it from 1948.[1] Jerusalem, agricultural cooperation, and support in international institutions have remained prominent elements of the relationship.[1][4]

The diplomatic connection has operated alongside programs directed toward Guatemalan professionals, farmers, students, and communities affected by disaster.[5] Israeli experts have provided technical advice and courses in Guatemala, while thousands of Guatemalan professionals have received scholarships for training in Israel.[5] Cooperation has covered technology, medicine, agriculture, health, education, tourism, and water purification.[5] These activities have included both long-term professional development and emergency medical assistance, notably the dispatch of an Israeli medical team after the Fuego volcano eruption in June 2018.[8]

The relationship also has a public commemorative dimension: Guatemala’s Congress established May 14 as an annual day of friendship with Israel, with cultural activities intended to recall cooperation and assistance between the two peoples.[1] Economic ties acquired a further institutional framework through a bilateral free trade agreement signed in Tel Aviv on September 8, 2022, followed by scientific and technological cooperation in 2024.[6][7] Diplomatic disagreements have nevertheless accompanied this cooperation, particularly over Jerusalem and the historical role of Israeli military assistance to Guatemala.[9][10]

Guatemala was one of eleven states represented on the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in 1947, with Jorge García-Granados serving as its delegate.[11] García-Granados and Uruguay’s Enrique Rodríguez Fabregat were particularly supportive of the Zionist position, and Guatemala was among the seven committee members recommending separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem internationalized.[11] During July 1947, García-Granados was moved by Chaim Weizmann’s appeals for partition.[12] He also helped persuade other Latin American representatives to support the proposal at the General Assembly.[2]

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 by 33 votes to 13, with 10 abstentions.[2] Guatemala voted in favor of the partition plan.[11] Guatemala’s vote formed part of substantial Latin American support: thirteen countries from the region voted for partition, six abstained, and Cuba was the sole Latin American country voting against it.[11] The proposal envisaged a Jewish state and an Arab state, making Guatemala’s participation in this process an important antecedent of the subsequent bilateral relationship.[2]

Guatemala recognized Israel in May 1948, and full diplomatic relations date from that year.[1][13] Israel’s diplomatic representation in Guatemala City is listed with a January 1950 date in a diplomatic-missions table updated in May 2016.[14] Guatemala established the first Latin American representation in Jerusalem in 1955, and a United States diplomatic memorandum independently records its mission as being located there that year.[15][16] García-Granados became Guatemala’s ambassador to Israel in 1956, when the Guatemalan embassy was in Jerusalem.[2]

The location of the mission brought Guatemala into the wider diplomatic discussion about Jerusalem from an early stage.[16] A 1962 United States memorandum described the American practice of explaining the United Nations’ historical interest in Jerusalem to governments considering diplomatic missions in Israel and expressing a preference that they establish those missions in Tel Aviv.[16] It also recognized that the choice belonged to each government.[16] The memorandum situated Guatemala’s Jerusalem mission within this wider history, which included the earlier United Nations proposal for an internationally administered city.[16]

High-level visits and cultural institutions helped sustain ties during the following decades.[17] Former Guatemalan president Arana made an official visit to Israel in 1972, and the Guatemalan-Israeli Cultural Institute fostered cooperation between the countries.[17] Brigadier General Itzhak Pundak was serving as Israel’s ambassador in Guatemala at the time of a 1974–75 account of the relationship.[17] In January 1984, the Israeli ambassador attended a FEDECO convention held in Guatemala City and Antigua alongside Jewish community representatives from Central America and Panama.[18]

Military cooperation developed during the 1970s alongside these diplomatic contacts.[10] Guatemala’s chief of staff, Kjell Laugerud García, visited Israel in 1971 and expressed interest in armaments and military communications equipment.[10] The countries signed a cooperation agreement that year, although its details were not made public.[10] Israeli President Ephraim Katzir visited Guatemala in 1977 and signed a military-assistance agreement.[10] Israeli assistance became more important after Guatemalan generals rejected United States military aid amid Carter-administration pressure over human-rights violations.[10]

Guatemala maintained its embassy in Jerusalem until 1980, when it moved the mission following Israel’s passage of the Basic Law on Jerusalem.[3] In August 1980, United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 called on states with diplomatic missions in Jerusalem to withdraw them, prompting the departure of thirteen embassies.[19] Guatemala’s departure thus occurred as part of a broader withdrawal of foreign diplomatic missions from the city.[3][19]

President Jimmy Morales decided on December 24, 2017, to return Guatemala’s embassy to Jerusalem.[2] His announcement followed President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[20] In February 2018, Trump met Morales in Washington and thanked him for his support on Israel.[21] The Guatemalan embassy was formally inaugurated in Jerusalem on May 16, 2018, at a ceremony attended by Morales and Netanyahu, two days after the United States opened its embassy there.[3] Morales said the American decision had given Guatemala the courage to act and expressed hope that other countries would follow.[3]

Guatemala was the first Latin American country to move its embassy to Jerusalem in this period.[1] At the inauguration, Netanyahu praised Guatemala’s United Nations representative for his work in support of partition and invoked Guatemala’s early recognition of Israel.[3] The embassy opening restored a diplomatic presence in a city where Guatemala had maintained a mission decades earlier.[16][3]

Bernardo Arévalo, elected president in 2023, brought substantial personal experience of Israel to Guatemala’s leadership.[8] He had served there as first secretary, consul, and minister counselor between 1984 and 1988, and described Israel as a country for which he had “great affection,” recalling ten important years of his life spent there.[8] He also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem while his father was Guatemala’s ambassador to Israel.[22] His government took office in January 2024, the year in which the countries implemented their trade agreement and signed a new scientific cooperation accord.[22][7]

Guatemala accounted for 116 participants in Israeli MASHAV courses in 2009, more than any other Latin American country that year.[4] The regional total was 614 participants from 22 countries, placing Guatemala’s participation within a broader Israeli program of professional training for Latin America.[4] By 2020, thousands of Guatemalan professionals had received scholarships to attend training courses in Israel, while Israeli specialists had delivered courses and technical assistance in Guatemala itself.[5]

Agriculture has been a recurring focus of this exchange.[4][18] In 1983, Israel held a seminar in Guatemala on agricultural development and land reform for Central American farm experts.[18] Israeli involvement in the region included agricultural development, agro-industry, and farm cooperatives modeled on kibbutzim and moshavim.[18] Guatemala’s agriculture minister, Rodolfo Perdomo Menendez, praised Israeli assistance, particularly its contribution to agricultural training.[18]

A later initiative associated with Guatemala’s embassy in Jerusalem was the “Shmita program,” intended to strengthen Central American agriculture through technology and make Guatemala a strategic agricultural partner for Israel during years when Jewish law requires the land to lie fallow.[4] The program linked Guatemala’s capacity to export agricultural produce with Israeli demand during a period of lower domestic production.[4] Guatemala benefited through agricultural exports and opportunities to develop its agricultural technology, while Israel gained produce and opportunities to sell agricultural technology in Guatemala.[4] Guatemala’s ambassador linked increased agricultural exports to the Middle East to the embassy’s relocation to Jerusalem.[4]

Medical cooperation has included an emergency response as well as professional exchanges.[5][8] In June 2018, an Israeli medical team arrived at President Morales’s request to assist victims of the Fuego volcano eruption.[8] The team helped local hospitals treat patients suffering from burns, broken bones, and respiratory ailments.[8] By 2020, a housing project for people affected by the eruption was also being completed.[5] These activities accompanied cooperation in health, medicine, water purification, education, technology, and tourism.[5]

The free trade agreement signed in Tel Aviv on September 8, 2022, was designed to expand trade and friendly relations, reduce trade barriers, provide preferential market access, and establish predictable commercial rules.[6] Following legal review and ratification in both countries, the Israeli government’s implementation summary gives March 1, 2024, as its entry-into-force date.[6] The agreement also identifies economic development and cooperation in areas of shared interest as objectives.[6]

For Israeli exports, the agreement provides tariff benefits covering 3,735 industrial tariff lines, including immediate or phased duty-free treatment for 3,640 lines, together with benefits for eighteen agricultural tariff lines.[6] Its coverage includes food, agricultural, and industrial goods, with pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, plastics, electronic components, and medical equipment among the products receiving reductions or gradual elimination of duties.[22] These provisions extend the commercial relationship beyond agricultural cooperation into a range of manufactured and specialized products.[6][22]

For imports from Guatemala, the agreement provides benefits for industrial goods and 68 agricultural tariff lines.[6] The agricultural concessions include reduced duties on flowers and ornamental plants, nuts, berries, and spices.[6] Bananas, spices, forest fruits, and some industrial goods were among the products identified as receiving full duty exemptions.[22] The agreement also contains rules of origin and provisions for cooperation in customs administration.[6]

Economic cooperation under the agreement includes seminars, workshops, exchanges of delegations and experts, and training.[6] Particular attention is given to small and medium-sized businesses.[6] These provisions sit alongside the tariff arrangements, extending the agreement to institutional cooperation and the exchange of practical expertise.[6]

In May 2024, Israel and Guatemala signed a scientific and technological cooperation accord in Guatemala City.[7] The accord provides for exchanges of researchers and scientists in agriculture, water, and artificial intelligence.[7] Its conclusion maintained a channel of technical cooperation even during a period when bilateral relations had cooled under Guatemala’s then-current government and Israel faced international calls for a boycott over the war with Hamas.[7]

Guatemala’s voting record at the United Nations showed increased support for Israel across a selected group of General Assembly votes between 2009 and 2019.[4] On four votes concerning Palestinian rights in 2009, Guatemala voted against Israel twice and abstained twice.[4] On the same four votes in 2019, it supported Israel three times and abstained once.[4] This comparison formed part of a broader examination of changing Latin American voting patterns rather than a record of every Guatemalan vote on Israel-related questions.[4]

Jerusalem has provided a particularly visible expression of the relationship, connecting Guatemala’s early diplomatic presence in the city with its embassy’s return in 2018.[16][3] The relocation also linked Guatemalan diplomacy to the United States’ change in policy under Trump.[20] The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs argues that Morales’s decision to return the embassy implied recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, while distinguishing that implication from an explicit declaration of recognition.[23]

The same center reports that Guatemala voted against the 2017 General Assembly resolution opposing the United States’ Jerusalem decision, placing it among nine opposing states, alongside 128 supporting votes and 35 abstentions.[23] The wider diplomatic confrontation included a nonbinding General Assembly call for the United States to shelve its recognition of Jerusalem and Trump’s threat to cut aid to countries supporting that resolution.[21]

Guatemalan support for Israel was again expressed at the General Assembly in October 2023, when Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro condemned the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 and called for the release of hostages.[24] He argued that Israel had a right to defend its citizens and also condemned Hezbollah attacks on Israel.[24] At the same time, he called for humanitarian pauses and assistance and described a vision of Israel and Palestine living alongside one another in peace.[24]

Bucaro said Guatemala would oppose the resolution then before the Assembly because it did not recognize Israel’s right to self-defense.[24] In making that argument, he invoked Golda Meir and quoted a contrast between armed organizations laying down their weapons and Israel doing so, using the quotation to emphasize the importance he attached to Israel’s continued ability to defend its citizens.[24]

Within Guatemala, the annual May 14 friendship observance gives the bilateral relationship a place in public education and cultural activity.[1] The law directs the Ministry of Education and other public bodies to promote activities recalling friendship, cooperation, and assistance between the two peoples.[1] Public schools incorporated an hour of study about Israel in 2019.[1] A related educational program brought some participating Guatemalan schoolchildren to the capital for the first time; for many, the visit was also their first journey outside their villages and their first bus ride.[5]

These educational activities complemented the work of the Guatemalan-Israeli Cultural Institute and contacts involving Israeli diplomats and Central American Jewish communities.[17][18] Together with professional scholarships, agricultural training, and humanitarian assistance, they provided channels of contact extending beyond presidential meetings and embassy decisions.[5][17]

The Jerusalem embassy decision drew widespread international criticism.[21] The dispute concerned the city’s status: Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, while Israel claims Jerusalem as its capital.[23] Some analysts viewed Morales’s decision as serving domestic political interests, appealing to evangelical supporters, and improving relations with the Trump administration, although there was no indication of a quid pro quo from Washington.[9] Before his election, Arévalo supported a two-state solution and criticized Morales’s relocation decision.[8]

Military cooperation during Guatemala’s 1960–1996 civil war is another significant historical controversy.[18][25] During the 1978–1982 government of General Romeo Lucas García, when the United States had banned arms sales over military human-rights abuses, Israel supplied intelligence systems and weapons, including Galil rifles.[9] Accounts of the scale and organization of this involvement differ: a 1984 statement by Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum rejected reports of extensive Israeli arms supply and said he had found no government-to-government transfers, whereas a 1985 article alleged that Israel had become Guatemala’s principal arms supplier from 1978 and quoted former ambassador Elieser Armon acknowledging arms sales while disputing their characterization.[18][25] Reports also included claims of at least 300 Israeli security advisers in the early 1980s, alongside Israeli diplomatic denials concerning intelligence, security, communications, and military-training personnel.[9][10]