In an interview with Montevideo Portal, the diplomat said that “Uruguay’s silence during these months of genocide” in which, she stressed, more than 40,000 of her compatriots have died in Gaza and now also in the West Bank, is striking.

She mentioned as a precedent the decision a year ago of the government of President Luis Lacalle Pou to open a commercial office in Jerusalem.

Rasheed considered such a move illegal, contrary to UN provisions and other international laws on occupied Palestinian territory.

It doesn’t matter if it is an embassy or if it is a commercial office. It is illegal, she stressed.

She said this does not contribute to peace. “It is a signal to the Israeli government that Uruguay has recognized the illegality of the annexation of Jerusalem,” she remarked.

The Palestinian ambassador said that she has held dialogues with Uruguayan authorities, in particular when Uruguay twice abstained on a proposal for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, demanded by a majority in the UN General Assembly.

Uruguay abstained. That was a surprise, and we did not understand that position, she said.

“There was a third vote in the UN General Assembly, and Uruguay voted yes to the humanitarian ceasefire. And that was a good sign,” she acknowledged. Our embassy sent a lot of information every day, facts, reports from the UN, from human rights organizations, everything, to give them all the information,” she said.

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