54 out of 86 ambassadors to Israel, boycotted a ceremony held by the Israeli Foreign Ministry yesterday evening in Jerusalem on the eve of Washington’s transfer of its embassy to the occupied city.
The Haaretz newspaper reported that most EU member states did not participate in the ceremony because they have a firm policy towards the transfer of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It said that the ambassadors of Russia, Egypt, India, Japan and Mexico also did not attend the celebration.
According to Haaretz, 32 ambassadors participated in the ceremony, including only four from EU countries: Austria, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic, in addition to five European countries which are not members of the union: Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia.
The ambassadors of 12 African countries attended the ceremony, namely Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia and Rwanda.
From Central America, ambassadors of five states participated in the celebration: Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama and Honduras, and from South America, only Paraguay and Peru participated. Four Asian countries attended the celebration: Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
The US embassy was actually transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Monday, during a ceremony in its new headquarters. A US delegation arrived in Israel earlier Sunday, led by the daughter of US President Donald Trump, Ivanka, her husband Jared Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, to attend the embassy’s opening ceremony. On 6 December, 2017, Trump announced Jerusalem as the capital of the occupation entity, which sparked the Arab and Muslim world anger.
