Gustavo Petro

Forthright and eloquent excerpts of a speech made by Colombian president Gustavo Petro at an emergency meeting of the Hague Group convened in Bogotá in July have “gone viral.” Thirty nations from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America gathered to discuss coordinated diplomatic, legal and economic measures “to restrain Israel’s assault on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and defend international law at large.”

Speaking of “the living intelligence of humanity,” contrasting it to the shocking events in Gaza, and comparing Gaza to the 1937 bombing of civilians in the Basque town of Guernica—memorialized in Picasso’s famous painting—Petro’s attention-getting remarks included the following:

“And Gaza is simply an experiment by the mega-rich trying to show all the peoples of the world how you respond to a rebellion of humanity. They plan to bomb all of us in the South, but they will end up like Guernica, bombing themselves with foreign weapons…. [W]e are now experiencing the possibility of barbarism. But also, dialectically, the possibility of a different humanity, one that can love and think collectively. And we survive because the other form of help, besides the heart, is thinking.”

Colombia and South Africa, as co-chairs, joined six other nations (Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, and Senegal) to form the Hague Group in January 2025, anchored in a “solemn commitment” to the rule of law, international law, and principles of justice. They are calling for “collective action … in pursuit of accountability for Israel’s grave violations of international law against the Palestinian people.”

Petro has served as president of Colombia since 2022. After joining the M-19 guerrilla group at age 17 (for which he endured arrest and torture in 1985), he turned to a political career that, prior to the presidency, included stints as a local councilman, parliamentary representative, senator, and mayor of Bogotá.

Writing in The Guardian one week before the Hague Group’s emergency meeting, Petro warned,

“While we may face threats of retribution when we stand up for international law—as South Africa discovered when the United States retaliated against its case at the International Court of Justice—the consequences of abdicating our responsibilities will be dire. If we fail to act now, we not only betray the Palestinian people, we become complicit in the atrocities committed by Netanyahu’s government.”

In his Bogatá speech, Petro also asked, “What are we doing in NATO? …How can we stand with armies that drop bombs on children? Those armies are not armies of freedom; they are armies of darkness.”

Historically, Colombia and Israel have had close commercial ties, with Israel supplying much of the Latin American nation’s military hardware. In 2023, Petro severed their diplomatic relationship, citing the mounting civilian deaths in Gaza. And in 2024, with Israel sourcing nearly half of its coal from Colombia, Petro announced a full ban on coal exports to Israel—following up in 2025 with a declaration that his Navy would enforce the ban.

At the close of the Hague Group’s emergency meeting, 13 of the 30 states publicly committed to implementing measures “to break the ties of complicity with Israel’s campaign of devastation.” They have set September 20—the date of the next UN General Assembly—as their target for other nations across the world to join them in standing up for the people of Palestine.