Chilean Foreign Minister Ximena Fuentes Torrijo apologized to Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz on Sunday for the severe diplomatic incident last week during which Chilean President Gabriel Boric refused to accept the credentials of Israel’s new ambassador Gil Artzyeli. Artzyeli’s accreditation ceremony has been rescheduled for September 30.

Artzyeli was at the government offices in Chile’s capital of Santiago Thursday to present his credentials to President Gabriel Boric along with other diplomats but was stopped in his tracks.

Artzyeli “was already at the place, waiting to go into the room, when the minister of foreign relations came up to him and said that due to an incident that had taken place … with the death of a 17-year-old teenager in an operation by the Israeli military, the president had decided in that context to postpone the delivery of the credentials,” a diplomatic official with close knowledge of the incident who was not authorized to speak on the record told The Associated Press.

Boric is a longstanding strident critic of Israel and of Chilean Jews who support the Jewish State, even calling Israel a “genocidal and murderous country” in the past. When the Jewish community sent him a Rosh Hashanah gift in 2019, he responded on Twitter: “I appreciate the gesture but they could start by asking Israel to return the illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”

“Israel views with severity the puzzling & unprecedented behavior of Chile. This seriously harms the relations between the two countries,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on Twitter after the incident last week.

2/2 in which Israel's response will be made clear to the ambassador.

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— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) September 16, 2022

Chile’s ambassador to Israel “has been summoned … for a reprimanding conversation” on Sunday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said. “Israel’s response will be made clear to the ambassador.”

After the incident sparked controversy within Chile, Artzyeli was summoned to the Foreign Ministry Thursday afternoon.

“They apologized to me and the state of Israel numerous times,” Artzyeli told journalists after a meeting with Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Ximena Fuentes. “It wasn’t a very comfortable incident this morning, but being Israeli and a Jew, my people have gone through worse things over the past four thousand years. And we will overcome this morning’s incident for the good of Chile, for the good of Israel and our bilateral relations.”

In Chile, a group of 21 lawmakers criticized Boric for what they characterized as a “snub” of “unprecedented” proportions.

“President Boric boycotts bilateral relations, improvising a decision at the moment the ambassador was in the Foreign Relations Ministry,” the lawmakers who are part of a Chile-Israel interparliamentary group said in a letter Friday. “Situations like these demonstrate a profound disdain for the more than 70 years of friendship between Chile and Israel.”

Several opposition lawmakers also independently criticized Boric for the move.

Left-leaning Boric has frequently spoken up against Israel and its military operations. In a television interview last year, Boric, who became Chile’s president in March, was asked if he maintained his earlier stated opinion that Israel is a “genocidal and murderous” state. “I maintain it,” he answered.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)