At an official ceremony on Friday, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum accepted several ambassadors’ credentials, including Nadya Rasheed, the ambassador of “Palestine.” Several media outlets mistakenly concluded that this marked Mexico’s official recognition of a Palestinian state.

The two posed for a photo shared by the Palestinian Embassy on Twitter, accompanied by a message from Rasheed expressing gratitude for Mexico’s stance on the war waged by Israel against Hamas.

Mainstream media, including BBC Mundo, have reported inaccurately several times in the past that Mexico recognized Palestinian statehood.

The Mexican government has previously accepted the credentials of “Palestinian ambassadors” without recognizing a Palestinian state. According to the Mexican Foreign Ministry’s website, the first time a Mexican president accepted the credentials of a PLO envoy was in 2013. Although the Mexican government has supported international actions that legally recognize Palestine as a state, the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs has never issued an official recognition statement.

“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.

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.”

Sheinbaum, who was born Jewish, has expressed support for the creation of a Palestinian state inside Israel’s borders. 

In October 2024, she maintained that recognizing both Israel and Palestine was necessary for achieving peace in the Middle East. Latin American media reported her statement, claiming that Sheinbaum had officially recognized Palestinian statehood.