Hundreds march in Bogotá against Colombia’s restored ties with Israel

Hundreds of people marched in Bogotá, Colombia, on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, against the government’s restored diplomatic relationship with Israel. The demonstration began outside the Israeli Embassy on the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks in Israel, putting a recent change in Colombian foreign policy at the center of a public protest.

Al Jazeera and Agencia EFE reported the turnout as hundreds, without giving a verified count. The marchers objected to Colombia’s renewed ties with Israel amid the war in Gaza. Their descriptions of Israel’s conduct are attributed claims by participants, rather than findings established by the protest reports.

What happened at the Bogotá march

EFE reported that the march started outside the Israeli Embassy and was headed toward the Palestinian Embassy, where it was expected to end. Bogotá’s government had listed a route between those locations in its schedule of demonstrations for October 5 to 10. The schedule put the October 7 gathering at 2 p.m., named the Comité de Octubre por Palestina as its convener and warned that plans could change.

According to EFE, participants carried Palestinian flags, wore kufiyas and chanted slogans condemning Israel’s actions. A large Palestinian flag was displayed from a pedestrian bridge on Avenida El Dorado. Those details describe the demonstration as EFE observed it; its report did not establish a final turnout or confirm that the march reached its planned endpoint.

What protesters and Israel’s ambassador said

Nicolas Isaza, a participant, told Al Jazeera that the earlier break in diplomatic relations had sent a message that Colombia would not be complicit in what he called atrocities. With relations restored, he said, the government was no longer drawing that line over events in Palestine. His comments expressed a protester’s assessment of the policy change.

EFE spoke to María, whom it identified as a member of the Workers’ and Socialist Party. She said the demonstration rejected what she called genocide and occupation. María Eugenia Martínez told EFE she preferred former President Gustavo Petro’s decision to break relations and considered the renewed ties unacceptable. She also criticized the new government’s policies concerning women, LGBTQ people and rights.

Another participant, Jorge Martínez, told EFE he supported Petro’s decision to break political and economic relations with Israel, saying it responded to what he called genocide. The three accounts show overlapping objections to the restoration of ties, while reflecting the speakers’ own characterizations of Israel’s actions.

Israeli Ambassador Vivian Aisen criticized the demonstration in a post on X, EFE reported. She described October 7 as a day of mourning, memory and respect, and called the rally outside the embassy a provocation and disrespectful. The cited reports provide no response from Colombia’s government to the protesters’ demands.

How Colombia’s Israel policy changed

Colombia’s foreign ministry says the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1957. Those relations were briefly broken in 2024 and restored on August 11, 2026, according to the ministry’s account. That timeline confirms the diplomatic reversal at issue in the march, independently of the demonstrators’ views of it.

Al Jazeera reported that President Abelardo de la Espriella, who took office in August, had campaigned on closer ties with Israel and the United States. It also reported that protesters criticized his decision to open a new Colombian embassy in Jerusalem. The foreign ministry’s bilateral relations page confirms the restoration of ties but does not document those specific steps.

The ministry also lists a Colombia–Israel free trade agreement signed in 2013 as in force, alongside other bilateral agreements. The existence of that agreement does not establish that restoring diplomatic relations changed trade terms. The protest reports do not set out any such change, even as participants described their opposition in both political and economic terms.

In a separate policy move on August 10, Colombia’s foreign ministry announced that it recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The statement is part of the documented shift in Colombia’s approach to Israel, but the cited protest reports do not connect the October 7 march to that decision. The central objection reported from the march was the restoration of relations.