On Thursday, Honduras announced its intention to open an embassy in Jerusalem by the end of the month. This will make Honduras the fourth country to have their embassy to Israel in Jerusalem after the United States, Kosovo, and their neighbor, Guatemala. . Paraguay opened its embassy in Jerusalem in 2018, but then reversed course just a few months later. 

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and Foreign Minister Lisandro Rosales were greeted by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at a ceremony in an office building in a technology park in Jerusalem. 

“I am here today with our delegation to inaugurate the Embassy of Honduras in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel,” Hernandez said. “I sincerely wish that the next president of Honduras, no matter what party he is from, maintains this decision. I will fight for this.”

“We are going to formalize what we have already carried out step by step, which is the installation of our embassy in Jerusalem,” President Hernandez said.

He added that the move “will empower us on the agricultural side, in the field of innovation and in the field of tourism.”

Bennett thanked Honduras for “consistently standing by Israel in international institutions when it wasn’t always popular, and sometimes paying a price”.

“This is the proof of friendship,” Bennett said.

Bennett said to the delegation that the move was  “testimony to the deep friendship and bond between the Jewish state Israel and the people and state of Honduras.”

The two leaders also signed several bilateral cooperation agreements. 

In a reciprocal move, Israel is planning to open a diplomatic office in Tegucigalpa, Honduras’s capital. Honduras recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in August 2019, and a month later opened a commercial office in Jerusalem as an extension to Honduras’s embassy in Rishon Lezion.

As part of his visit, Hernandez visited the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Thursday. He also met with President Reuven Rivlin.

Honduras was one of the first countries to recognize the State of Israel, in 1948, and the Jewish community in Honduras, totaling 390, has benefited greatly from Israeli aid.