Chile’s President José Antonio Kast told President Isaac Herzog during their meeting in Costa Rica that he intends to return his country’s ambassador to Israel in a few weeks, The Times of Israel learned Friday.
Chile recalled its ambassador less than a month after the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel under Kast’s leftist predecessor, Gabriel Boric, accusing the Jewish state of “unacceptable” human rights violations in the war against the terror group.
During his meeting with Herzog, Kast also said that Chile wants to increase cooperation with Israel across all sectors, including agriculture, health, AI, technology and security.
He stressed to Herzog that Chilean media criticized him for the meeting, to which Herzog responded that there are many issues of bilateral interest.
“We discussed the important opportunities to restore Israel-Chile relations to their previous heights to the benefit of both our nations,” Herzog wrote on X.
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The move marked a shift in Chilean policy, which has been marked by anti-Israel sentiment since Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
Jose Antonio Kast, presidential candidate for the Republican Party, arrives to vote during the presidential runoff election in Santiago, Chile, December 14, 2025. (AP/Matias Delacroix)
Chile, which has the largest Palestinian population outside the Arab world, joined calls in January 2025 for an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in the Israel-Hamas war.
In 2024, Chile said it would exclude Israeli firms from the International Air and Space Fair (FIDAE), Latin America’s biggest aerospace fair.
Kast was elected in a landslide victory in December, becoming Chile’s most right-wing president in 35 years of democracy.
His election followed a series of victories for Latin America’s right, after wins in Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador.
Kast campaigned on a promise to expel more than 300,000 immigrants, seal the northern borders, take a “firm hand” on near-record crime rates and restart the stalled economy.
Kast’s family background has raised questions in the past. Media investigations revealed his German-born father was a member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party and a soldier during World War II. Kast has insisted his father was a forced conscript and did not support the Nazis.
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