Mexico’s president on Friday accepted the diplomatic credentials of an ambassador of the PLO, prompting claims that this meant formal recognition of a Palestinian state.
President Claudia Sheinbaum, who is Jewish, accepted Nadya Rasheed’s credentials along with those if other new ambassadors. This has happened before without leading to recognition of Palestinian statehood by Mexico.
The first time a Mexican president accepted the credentials of a PLO envoy was in 2013, according to the website of the Mexican Foreign Ministry.
Whereas Mexico publicly supports international recognition of Palestinian statehood, it has not issued a formal recognition, its foreign ministry has said.
“Mexico has maintained the practice of not unilaterally recognizing states. Its position has been to support the entry of a state into the United Nations as a form of collective recognition,” the ministry’s website states.
The Mexican embassy in Israel did not immediately reply to a query by JNS as to whether the country recognizes Palestinian statehood. A spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry said it had nothing to add on the subject at this point.
A diplomatic source familiar with the Israeli-Mexican relationship and Friday’s credentials ceremony told JNS: “There’s no new development here. Palestinian envoy presented her credentials in 2011 to the Mexican president, and also in 2016.”
Mainstream media, including BBC Mundo, have reported inaccurately several times in the past that Mexico recognized Palestinian statehood.
On social media, the Palestinian Authority celebrated the credentials ceremony as a “historic event,” as it wrote in a statement. “A fundamental step in strengthening the bonds of friendship and cooperation that unite our peoples and nations,” read the text. It neither claimed that this constituted formal recognition nor explained what made the occasion historic.
Several Latin American media reported that the credentials ceremony meant formal recognition of Palestinian statehood by Mexico. Last month, Latin American media also reported that Sheinbaum had officially recognized Palestinian statehood after she told a reporter that she believes in the “need to recognize both states [Israel and a Palestinian state] and build a peaceful solution.” But she also added, “That has been the Mexican government’s policy for years and still is.”
Last year, Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, confirmed that Mexico does not formally recognize a Palestinian state. Asked why, he said: “If we take sides, we wouldn’t be helping what should matter most to all of us: stopping the war, stopping more deaths, killings and murders in Gaza. That’s why we’ve acted with great caution.”
Under the left-wing party that López Obrador founded, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), Mexico has shifted away from the U.S. position against unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood, advocating in favor of it while stopping short of recognition.
Sheinbaum, a former physicist who belongs to López Orbador’s party, was elected as his successor last year.
In 2009, before she entered politics, Sheinbaum condemned Israel’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza that year: “Nothing justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians. … Nothing can justify the murder of a child,” she wrote in a letter to a local newspaper.
Mexico, which has a large Palestinian and Arab minority, has seen many cases of anti-Israel vitriol in recent years, and especially since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, plunging the region into war.
In January, an anti-Israel protester damaged a statue of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Museo de Cera wax museum in Mexico City. Last year, pro-Hamas rioters set fire to the Israeli embassy in Mexico during a protest against Israel.