{"id":38176,"date":"2019-03-31T11:22:30","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T11:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38176"},"modified":"2019-03-31T11:22:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T11:22:30","slug":"brazils-bolsonaro-visits-israel-with-embassy-decision-pending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38176","title":{"rendered":"Brazil’s Bolsonaro visits Israel with embassy decision pending"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Brazil<\/a>‘s President Jair Bolsonaro began a visit to\u00a0Israel<\/a>\u00a0on Sunday with a decision pending on fulfilling a\u00a0promise<\/a>\u00a0to move his country’s embassy to Jerusalem, a policy change opposed by military officers in his cabinet.<\/p>\n

The four-day visit by the far-right leader comes a week before Israel’s closely contested election in which the right-wing Prime Minister\u00a0Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>\u00a0is battling a popular centrist candidate and corruption allegations, which he denies.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I love Israel,” Bolsonaro said in Hebrew at a welcoming ceremony, with Netanyahu at his side, at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport.<\/span><\/p>\n

Netanyahu said he and Bolsonaro would sign “many agreements”, including security deals, and that the Brazilian leader would visit Judaism’s holy Western Wall at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yuval Steinitz,\u00a0<\/span>Israel’s energy minister, said on Sunday that\u00a0<\/span>Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras “will take part in a process of oil and gas exploration in Israel”.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a Brazilian government official told Reuters news agency no decision had been made on the embassy move, but “something will have to be said about the embassy during the trip”.<\/p>\n

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that a formal announcement might not come during the visit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Visiting Brazil for the January 1 presidential inauguration, Netanyahu said Bolsonaro had told him that moving the Brazilian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv was a matter of “when, not if”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Netanyahu, Bolsonaro is an outspoken admirer of\u00a0United\u00a0<\/span>States<\/span><\/a>\u00a0President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>, who moved the U<\/span>S<\/span>embassy to Jerusalem last May, five months after breaking with international consensus and recognising the city as Israel’s capital.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bolsonaro also enjoys strong evangelical support at home. Netanyahu has courted US evangelical leaders during his current decade in power.<\/span><\/p>\n

But in an interview in February, Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourao, a retired army general, told Reuters that moving the embassy was a bad idea because it would hurt Brazil’s exports to Arab countries, including an estimated $5bn in sales of halal food.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bolsonaro<\/span>‘<\/span>s economic team and the country’s powerful farm lobby have advised against relocating the embassy to Jerusalem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel captured East Jerusalem along with the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinian Authority is seeking to establish a state in the two territories, with East Jerusalem as its capital.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro began a visit to\u00a0Israel\u00a0on Sunday with a decision pending on fulfilling a\u00a0promise\u00a0to move his country’s embassy to Jerusalem, a policy change opposed by military officers in his cabinet. The four-day visit by the far-right leader comes a week before Israel’s closely contested election in which the right-wing Prime Minister\u00a0Benjamin Netanyahu\u00a0is battling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}