Argentine President Alberto Fernández spoke Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and both spoke of “strengthening relations and trade ties” between Mercosur, to which the Argentines belong, and the Hebrew country.
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According to a statement from the Argentine government, Fernández contacted Netanyahu in the midst of Fatherland Day in Argentina to congratulate him for having managed to form a government together with the centrist Benny Gantz.
The formation of the new unitary Israeli government ends Israel’s longest political crisis with a program focused on economic recovery from the pandemic crisis and the annexation by the West Bank.
“Fernández and Netanyahu spoke about advancing talks to strengthen relations and trade ties through Mercosur in order to improve relations between the region and Israel,” indicated from the Argentine Presidency.
The conversation between the two leaders came a day after Netanyahu became the first active head of government of Israel to sit on the bench before the Israeli Justice for corruption offenses and, shortly before, returned to charge against the State institutions, before a trial that has evidenced the deep social polarization of the country.
COLLABORATION BETWEEN ARGENTINA AND ISRAEL BY THE CORONAVIRUS
The COVID-19 pandemic, which in Argentina already leaves 12,076 infections and 456 deaths and in Israel has reached 16,734 confirmed and 281 deaths, was the other topic of the conversation between Fernández and Netanyahu.
“The Israeli leader made available scientists from his country to work with their Argentine peers to promote exchange of ideas and mutual experiences on the coronavirus,” they said from the Argentine side of the call.
Fernández commented to Netanyahu that the Argentine government is following “closely the Israeli experience” against the coronavirus, while explaining the measures being taken in Argentina, one of the South American countries least hit by the virus.
“Our countries must always be very united,” added Fernández, president of a country that has one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, with about 200,000 members.
In the 1990s, Argentina registered two Islamist attacks on Jewish targets in Buenos Aires, first the one that took place at the Israeli Embassy in the southern country in 1992, which left 22 dead, and two years later the one that took place in the Jewish mutual AMIA, in which there were 85 dead.
