Site icon Middle East Monitor

Brazil should move its embassy in return for getting drones from Israel

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and Brazil's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro give a press conference after holding a meeting at the Copacabana fort in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on December 28, 2018.(Photo by LEO CORREA/AFP/Getty Images)

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 28 December 2018 [LEO CORREA/AFP/Getty Images]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed his government sell drones to Brazil in return for moving the country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Arab48 reported yesterday.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Arab48.com said, “Israel is expected to offer information and procurement opportunities to assist [Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro’s flagship project, domestic security” in return for his relocating the embassy.

Reporting an Israeli official who accompanied Netanyahu during his visit to Brazil, Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Brazil needs Israeli drones to fight crime.

Haaretz noted that tens of thousands of murders were committed in Brazil in 2017.

READ: Israel to build ‘Embassy Quarter’ in occupied Jerusalem

“Bolsonaro often speaks nostalgically about Brazil’s former military dictatorship and supports torture,” a Haaretz columnist wrote. “In 1999 he said that it would be impossible to change anything in Brazil just by voting, and that things would change only if civil war broke out and the army intervened. ‘If a few innocents die, that’s okay,’” the paper added.

He also said “he would jail his political opponents. ‘This group, if they want to stay, will have to obey our laws.’” His opponents “either stay abroad or they will go to jail.”

Bolsonaro has previously said he plans to close the Palestinian embassy in Brazil.

“Is Palestine a country? Palestine is not a country, so there should be no embassy here,” he said.

Exit mobile version