Conflict between Israel and Palestine: which party does Chile support?

The deep and difficult conflict between Palestine And Israel reached a climax of tension and unleashed violence on October 7 after the Hamas group – a Palestinian political and military organization – surprised southern Israel with a missile attack, clashes, assassinations and kidnappings.

Israel claims to be “preparing an important military action to change reality” and, in its defense plan, it benefits from the support of the United States, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, among other countries with which it maintains diplomatic relations.

For his part, the Government of Chile which maintains a good international link with Israel, but also with Palestine —in 1994 it was the first Latin American country to establish relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)— condemned Hamas attacks and called for an end to violence and a peace deal “fair, complete and final”.

Does the population share this diplomatic and neutral position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? This is the explanation of a Chilean, expert in the history of the Middle East.

—Chile has good relations with Israel, but it also has a very large population of Palestinian origin. Thus, he always tried to be neutral in the conflict, but also to call for dialogue. —Pablo Álvarez, secretary of studies at the School of History of the Diego Portales University (UDP), begins to explain to The third.

In this sense, the sociology academic emphasized that, In this particular case, the government of Chile condemned all terrorist acts and violence, but also showed some caution towards the Israeli reaction.

And contrary to what one might think, Within Chilean political parties, the conflict has not been polarized between the left and right axes.

—Pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli positions are very transversal in Chilean politics. There is no demarcation between left and right in relation to this (…) For example, in the Chilean Democratic Union (UDI) there is Iván Moreira, Palestinian standard bearer, while in the Communist Party (PC) there are people of Jewish origin. origin, like Cármen Hertz,” explains Álvarez.

For the sociologist, Public opinion tends to have a certain ignorance of the deep conflict in the Middle East and, as a result, Chileans tend to take positions accompanied by many prejudices. especially on social networks.

— Before that, it happened with the war in Ukraine. Russia was an “anti-imperialist and anti-Yankee” character, so Taking positions in conflicts is often based on prejudices, because little is known about the real problem itself. — he assured.

Another example given by the sociologist is the image of the Palestine Sports Club, the football team which, compared to other larger clubs, is generally considered smaller and therefore generates the “feeling” of wanting to support it .

—The same thing is happening on the Palestinian side of the conflict. Since, compared to Israel, it is considered more defenseless, a tendency is generated to favor those who are weaker, and this is a global trend, not just something that happens in our country. —Alvarez mentions LT.

However, There was an important phenomenon that began to manifest itself on social networks: different users began to mix concepts as if Hamas represents all of Palestine or that they belong to the terrorist group ISIS, when in reality this is not the case.

—For a long time, decades, I would say since the 70s, There is a deliberate attempt by the Western press to make these third world causes visible and to link them simply and clearly to terrorism.

The above increases prejudice that link Palestine and Arabs to terrorism.

—This ignorance makes many people think that every Palestinian or Muslim is a terrorist . This is very striking in the Chilean Muslim community (which is generally made up of Chilean converts, previously Catholics and converts to Islam), who receive insults in the street and even get yelled at for being like Ben Laden,” explains Álvarez.

This ignorance leads a large part of the population to take “very light positions on the issue” . Furthermore, the problem Added to this is the belief that there are “superior and inferior races”.

—Arabs and Muslims are often considered inferior civilizations to Western European civilization, which is prevalent in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There are those who say: ‘How can they demand that Israelis live with these people, if they are barbarians, terrorists, etc.?’ —examples the academic.

Furthermore, Religion plays a big role in prejudice in Latin America Well, for example, some evangelical groups – which are still growing on the continent – which hold anti-Semitic and Islamophobic views tend to exist.

In other wordsthere are various historical prejudices that have their roots in ignorance and ultimately prevent fruitful dialogue.

On the other hand, Ignorance of the conflicts in Israel and Palestine also increases due to distance, and not just geographic. Álvarez assures that Chile is still a very “provincial” country and that it is difficult to know in depth the history affecting the Middle East.

— The volume of international news in the Chilean press is very low. People don’t know it and there are also few internationalist experts.