Colombia's president-elect, Abelardo de la Espriella, will fully restore his country's diplomatic and economic relations with Israel from the moment he takes office on August 7, his transition office said on July 16, reversing a rupture imposed in 2024 by outgoing leftist President Gustavo Petro over the war in Gaza.

The announcement followed last week’s talks in Washington between Israel's Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa'ar, and Colombia's foreign minister-designate, Omar Bula Escobar, at which the two sides agreed what Sa'ar described as a "detailed roadmap" for reopening embassies, appointing ambassadors and eliminating visa requirements between the two countries.

Writing on X, Sa'ar said the pair had "outlined a detailed roadmap for the full and immediate restoration of diplomatic and economic relations" to take effect as soon as de la Espriella is sworn in. Both governments will immediately reappoint ambassadors, he said, filling posts left vacant since Petro recalled Colombia's envoy to Tel Aviv, Margarita Manjarrez, after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.

De la Espriella's office said Colombia intended to open its embassy in Jerusalem rather than Tel Aviv, where most foreign missions to Israel are based, a move that would align Bogotá with the position taken by Washington, which controversially relocated its own embassy to Jerusalem during President Donald Trump's first term in 2018. Bula Escobar told Sa'ar that his incoming government would proceed with opening the Jerusalem mission, and the Israeli minister pledged his ministry's full assistance in carrying out the move swiftly.

The two sides also agreed to scrap mutual tourist visa requirements introduced during the breakdown in ties. Israel had imposed a visa requirement on Colombian visitors in May last year, having previously allowed 90-day visa-free entry, prompting Petro's government to introduce reciprocal visa rules for Israeli citizens two months later.

De la Espriella's office further confirmed that Colombia would withdraw its support for the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the atrocities committed by the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza strip, and would "return to a responsible position on the international stage, including in UN bodies." It added: "The historic relationship that the Petro government unilaterally broke will be strengthened again."

Petro, Colombia's first leftist president in recent history and a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, formally severed diplomatic relations with Israel by May 2024, having repeatedly accused Benjamin Netanyahu's government of committing genocide in Gaza. He later floated plans for an embassy in Ramallah that never materialised.

His government subsequently expelled Israeli consular and economic staff following the Israeli military's interception last October of the Global Sumud aid flotilla, which was carrying Colombian activists, and terminated a bilateral free trade agreement dating to 2020. For decades before the Petro administration, Colombia had been one of Israel's closest allies in Latin America, with Israel a leading supplier of military equipment, including rifles and fighter jets, to the Colombian armed forces.

The rapprochement follows a narrow election victory for de la Espriella, a right-wing criminal defence lawyer and businessman who holds US citizenship, in a run-off on June 21 in which he defeated Petro's handpicked successor Ivan Cepeda by 49.66% to 48.7%. Netanyahu congratulated him on X, writing that "Israel's friends continue to win." De la Espriella, who was crucially endorsed by Trump, said during the campaign that he would seek greater Israeli cooperation to combat guerrilla armed groups funded by drug trafficking in Colombia.

The transition has not been free of controversy. Petro has refused to recognise de la Espriella’s victory and accused an Israeli cyber intelligence firm, BlackCore, of interfering in the election through a campaign involving hundreds of thousands of fake social media accounts targeting him and Cepeda, and separately alleged that “only the Israeli state could have accessed and manipulated polling data” on Colombia's National Registry website. Colombia's attorney-general, Gregorio Eljach, dismissed the allegations, saying there was no evidence of fraud.