“They have not committed a single crime. We are not in agreement with what Israel has done, and humanitarian aid needs to get to Gaza.” On October 2, 2025, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced on national television her diplomatic letters requesting Israel repatriate six Mexican citizens who had been illegally detained the previous day by the Israeli military. The activists, who have since been repatriated to Mexico, were members of the Global Sumud Flotilla, a humanitarian convoy seeking to deliver aid to Gaza by sea.
Sheinbaum’s stern statement contrasted with her government’s prior treatment of the Mexican delegation to the flotilla, which had been one of establishing distance. The government’s failure to formally endorse the Global Sumud Flotilla—which activists hoped would provide the aid convoy with more protection, as was the case with the governments of Italy and Spain—stirred up tensions with Mexico’s powerful Palestinian solidarity movement. Indeed, in the days leading up to the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla, protests erupted across the country demanding President Sheinbaum break all diplomatic relations with Israel. Since the interception, these calls have grown louder.
The recent debate over the flotilla is far from the first time that Mexico’s Palestinian solidarity movement has clashed with the progressive governments of the ruling Morena party. Informed by their own recent histories of violence at the hands of Israeli weapons and technology, Mexican activists have demanded that the government cut ties with Israel and abandon its steadfast defense of a “two-state solution” that appears increasingly impossible. Up until this point, the government has shown little interest in doing so.
A History of Moderation
The historic win of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in 2018 ushered in a new era of Mexican politics. AMLO’s campaign had promised a revolutionary political-economic project—known as the “Fourth Transformation”—that would break sharply with neoliberalism, redistribute wealth, and promote reconciliation with the country’s Indigenous communities. Changes to the country’s foreign relations, too, were a part of that promise.
Nevertheless, when it comes to Mexico’s relationship with Israel—a benchmark for the country’s progressives—change has been slow to come. The relationship has deep roots, starting in the mid-20th century and continuing well into the present day. AMLO’s predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, deepened the relationship when he bought the Israeli spyware known as Pegasus—a purchase for which he is now being investigated on charges of bribery.
From the beginning of Morena’s time in power, AMLO—and now Sheinbaum—have been ambivalent and contradictory vis-à-vis their willingness to transform their relationship to Israel
From the beginning of Morena’s time in power, AMLO—and now Sheinbaum—have been ambivalent and contradictory vis-à-vis their willingness to transform their relationship to Israel, a country upon which Mexico relies for the training of its armed forces and a large amount of arms spyware. In 2023, AMLO took a large step towards recognizing Palestinian statehood when he elevated the country’s special delegation mission to that of an embassy. The move reaffirmed the President’s long-running support of a “two-state solution.”
In the aftermath of the October 7th attacks, however, AMLO stuck to a more moderate position, ruling out immediately the severing of ties with Israel over its war crimes. At a special UN Assembly on Israeli actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, held in late October 2023, Mexico’s representative called for a ceasefire and urged Israel to lift its “siege” of the Palestinian territories, while stressing the need for a two-state solution. As the war carried on, AMLO adamantly refused to use the language of “genocide” to characterize Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
Morena’s quest to remain neutral has contrasted starkly with the region’s other progressive governments. As left-wing governments in Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia came out strongly against Israel’s genocidal response to the attacks of October 7, Mexico’s reaction stood out.
After more than a year of Israel’s attacks, Mexico briefly made headlines when it moved to join South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice, which accused Israel of genocide. Nevertheless, even then, the government of Mexico still positioned itself as a supporter of a two-state solution, AMLO refused to use the word “genocide,” and he vowed not to cut diplomatic ties with Israel amid the ICJ court proceedings. The next day, after Israeli strikes killed 45 Palestinians in Rafah, over 200 activists demonstrated outside the Israeli embassy in Mexico City, setting fire to the building and demanding the government take urgent action against Israel. AMLO condemned the protesters’s actions and continued to insist that Mexico would not cut ties with Israel.
The position of Claudia Sheinbaum on Israel—the first woman and Jewish person to lead the country—was heavily scrutinized as she came to power. Nevertheless, even though she is well-read on the issue and had previously publicly condemned Israeli violence in a newspaper article, her approach has largely reflected that of her predecessor. She has continued to champion an increasingly defunct “two-state solution” and paired symbolic denunciations of Israeli violence with an unwillingness to cut diplomatic, commercial, or military ties. She had also long refused to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza—though she did so for the first time in late September. Days later, however, her country’s delegation to the United Nations was one of the few in the region that refrained from boycotting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly.
Pressure from Below
Large swaths of Mexican civil society, on the other hand, have been adamant in their denunciation of Israel for decades. In fact, Netanyahu himself has long drawn the ire of Mexicans. In 2017, after Netanyahu endorsed Trump’s plan to build a border wall between Mexico and the United States, Mexican activists, academics, and members of its Jewish community denounced the leader. Though Netanyahu’s visit to the country that September calmed tensions with the government, his comments were not forgotten.
Intense anger at the ongoing ties between Mexico and Israel really exploded in the wake of Israel’s genocide response to the attacks of October 7, 2023. Unions, social movements, university students, and cultural organizations have staged rallies, held concerts, and set up encampments to demand that the Mexican government do more. As the genocide has dragged on, these groups have foregrounded Palestine to an even greater extent.
In early September, Mexico City played host to one of the largest cultural displays of Palestinian solidarity the world has seen. Puerto Rican artist Residente performed in the city’s central plaza before a crowd of 180,000 people. At the concert, he invited a recently resettled Palestinian family onstage, where they led a chant of “Free Palestine.”
Weeks later, on September 18, over 300 unions across Mexico took to the streets to demand that Mexico break diplomatic relations with Israel. Rosa Isela Carrasco Santos of the teachers union CNTE read an official decree demanding a pedagogical plan that informs students about the international crime of genocide in Gaza. She also expressed full support for sanctions against Israel, including the cancellation of the Mexico-Israel Free Trade Agreement. Given that trade between the two countries has long revolved around weapons, this issue has long been—and remains—extremely contentious, as illustrated by a recent episode in Oaxaca.
Shared Histories of Struggle
On September 8, Oaxaca’s governor Salomón Jara Cruz accepted 75 Israeli-manufactured semiautomatic rifles that had recently been purchased by Mexico’s National Defense Secretary. The purchase incensed activists like Frekan, a member of Colectivo Ocho Trueno and Asamblea Oaxaca con Palestina, two different Palestinian solidarity organizations. “The discourse surrounding Mexican humanity falls apart when you maintain relations with Israel [amidst the genocide],” said Frekan.
At Oaxaca’s Plaza de La Constitución, on September 12, Ocho Trueno and Asamblea Oaxaca con Palestina staged a public intervention to paint a mural depicting support for the Global Sumud Flotilla. Isai, a member of Oaxaca con Palestina, stressed that the day “Palestine is free, that liberation will also be felt in Oaxaca.”
Activists who have joined the struggle in solidarity with Palestine across the country have continuously traced connections between their own repression at the hands of the Mexican military and the role of Israel.
Activists who have joined the struggle in solidarity with Palestine across the country have continuously traced connections between their own repression at the hands of the Mexican military and the role of Israel. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the “Ayotzinapa 43,” a 2014 mass kidnapping and disappearance of protesting Nahua students whose anniversary was recently commemorated in late September.
In the lead-up to the massacre, an Israeli-made spyware known as Pegasus was sold to Mexican federal agencies by the Israeli NSO Group, which then used the software to spy on the students. Tomas Zerón, the former official who negotiated the purchase of Pegasus, is currently hiding in Israel to resist extradition for his role in the crime.
The call for Mexico to cut ties with Israel has grown as expressions of Palestinian solidarity— felt widely across the country—have blended seamlessly into countless local traditions of struggle. Schoolchildren in Indigenous municipalities like the Sierra Zapotec village of Santo Domingo Xagacía wave the Palestinian flag during Independence Day celebrations. The Zapatistas link the Palestinian cause to the struggle for Indigenous liberation at home and abroad. Palestinian flags and keffiyehs are a mainstay of anti-gentrification protests in Mexico City. Students commemorating the 1968 Tlateloco massacre fight for “revolution from Tlateloco to Palestine.”
The participation of Mexican citizens in the Global Sumud Flotilla and the widespread solidarity with Palestine efforts in the most rural corners of Mexico mark a clear shift in the nature of popular politicization on the issue. But, there is still much further to go until the Mexican state supports the cause of Palestinian freedom to the extent that it must. Until the government makes a serious move to sever diplomatic, commercial, or military relations with Israel, President Sheinbaum’s words will ring hollow.
Mexican activists fear that if Gaza is not saved, their country could be next. According to Dr. Emiliana Cruz, a member of Tianguis por Palestina and a university professor in Mexico City, “people are seeing that international laws no longer have a function.” She urged the government to end diplomatic relations with Israel and called for Mexican citizens to boycott Israeli goods. If Israel’s genocide is not stopped, “something like it could happen here someday,” she said.
Elybeth Sofia Alcantar is a Mixteca PhD student in Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on social and territorial movements in Oaxaca, Mexico.